Well, good afternoon, everyone. Good afternoon. Thank you. Thank you very much all for being here on this lovely fall day in Cambridge, Massachusetts. [LAUGHTER] We told the Justice that we wanted him to remember what it was really like to be a student here, which we'll talk about. But that was partly learning how to endure New England weather. My name is David Wilkins. I am the Faculty Director of the Center on the Legal Profession here at Harvard Law School, and on behalf of myself and my terrific team, Bryon Fong and Dana Walters, who are here with us as well as Dean Manning and the entire Harvard Law School community, I want to welcome all of you to what I am quite positive will be a fascinating dialogue with Chief Justice Chandrachud. Just by way of background, the Center on the Legal Profession, for those of you who don't know, it is a little bit what the name implies. We are a center to study lawyers around the world and how the legal profession is developing around the world and the role of lawyers in our justice system, in our political system, in our social system, and in our economic system. More than a decade ago, we started a research initiative, which we call the project on Globalization, Lawyers, and Emerging Economies or GLEE, as we like to call it. Some of the students will recognize that's the name of a very popular or once popular television show in the United States. I'm not going to sing and I don't wear a track suit, but we do study how our legal professions developing around the world, particularly in the most important rising powers of the world of which we wrote our very first book. This is the product placement part of the show on India called The Indian Legal Profession in the Age of Globalization. In the context of writing that, I had the great pleasure and encouragement of then Justice Chandrachud, who helped us tremendously to think about the important issues facing India, many of which I hope we'll have a chance to talk to today. But we are also joined in this welcome here by the Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute, of which my dear friend Tarun Khanna is sitting in the second row and many other distinguished faculty members affiliated with that center, which is really doing pathbreaking work here at Harvard. Anything that unites Harvard schools is pathbreaking and there are representatives. [LAUGHTER] All the Harvard people laughed on that because they know it's true to bring together representatives from the Kennedy School, the Business School, the Law School, the Medical School, the Public Health School, Arts and Sciences, Engineering, and many others, to think about what is one of the most important and dynamic regions in the world. That is South Asia, not just India, but all of the countries in the region. It's been our great pleasure to be able to collaborate with the terrific faculty and staff there in bringing you this event. Let me just say a few housekeeping things before we get started. This event is being recorded. We are going to put the recording on our website at the center and obviously, Tarun, we can give links to the Mittal Institute and others because they are far, far more people who wanted to be a part of this conversation and learn from this conversation than even could fit in this room. The only people who will be shown on the video are the Chief Justice and me, but we are going to have ample time for question and answer. If you ask a question, your voice will be captured on the recording as well, so please keep that in mind, which is a way of saying, please keep your questions both short and respectful so that we have ample opportunity to hear the views of the Chief Justice. I think that is all. I'm looking at my notes. I think those are all of the things I'm required to say, and now I'm going to say the things that I am thrilled to say, which is today we are so fortunate to have the 50th Chief Justice of India here with us today at a monumental time in India's history, the 75th anniversary of the Indian Supreme Court, but also of India's place in the world. I don't think anyone who looks at geopolitics or the news today can fail to see the increasingly important role that India is playing on the world stage in almost every dimension. We, at Harvard Law School, take some modest or probably undue pride in having been present at the beginning of the Chief Justice's career. He's a graduate of our LLM program here, which for many of you know is a Masters in Law program, where he came in 1982 and graduated with distinction in 1983. But that wasn't enough for him. He's hungry for knowledge in every way and he stayed to get an SJD, which is the equivalent of a PhD in law in 1986. As we were talking, that was really a rare thing for someone from India to do and, in general, for people to do. There were only a few SJD students, highly selective. But it showed, I think, his incredible interest in learning as much as he could from around the world. I think that has been reflected, although I'm going to ask him exactly, how in his approach first as a lawyer. He spent some time actually at a US law firm before going back home to India. He also spent some time as a radio DJ and perhaps someone will ask him about that. I always find that a wonderful part of his career and as a public servant in India for these years. It's particularly important lineage that he has because, of course, his father was also a Justice on the Indian Supreme Court. In fact, when we went to take him to look at his LLM yearbook picture, he had the same address that he currently lives in because he was living in his father's home that now he inhabits as the Justice and soon to be Chief Justice of India. I personally am delighted that his amazing wife, Kalpana Das, has agreed to venture here in this miserable weather and to spend the time with us. The Justice has two adult sons, who are lawyers, but they have two amazing daughters, who I've had the chance to be as guests in their home. I'm not going to read all his accomplishments because otherwise there would be no more time for discussion, so instead I want to say this. In January of this year 2023, in recognition of his incredible accomplishments, I had the distinct pleasure of awarding Chief Justice Chandrachud the Harvard Law School Center on the Legal Profession's Award for Global Leadership. It is our highest honor and it has been one that has been bestowed on an incredibly distinguished group of people starting with Samantha Power, whom many of you know. At the time, she was the US representative to the United Nations, the UN ambassador. She's now the head of AID and doing incredible humanitarian work around the globe. In 2017, we awarded it to Vernon Jordan, who was one of the legendary lawyers and advisors to presidents. In 2018, we awarded it to Katherine Adams, who's the Senior Vice President and General Counsel of Apple. In 2019, to Kenneth Fraser who is the CEO of Merck and has done amazing work both standing up for human rights and democratic rights, but also in distributing, for example, an Ebola vaccine in Africa in a way that no other pharmaceutical company had done. Then most recently after Justice Chandrachud, we gave it to Dana Remus, who was the former White House counsel under President Biden. You can see a long and distinguished group who are honored, each one to be joined by Chief Justice Chandrachud. We unfortunately had to do the honor online, which means we didn't get to actually physically hand him this lovely large guacamole bowl, which we have made for our award. When I knew he was coming here I said, will you please let us give this to you as our physical manifestation of the award, and he graciously said yes. With that, it takes two hands to pick this up. [LAUGHTER] I'm going to hand the Award for Global Leadership to Chief Justice Chandrachud. Thank you so much. It's a great honor. [APPLAUSE] Hold on, here's Dana. [LAUGHTER] Perfect. Thank you. Thank you. We will not make you carry this and carry on luggage. In fact, we will have it shipped to you back home. Now, to what all of these people are here to hear, which is to hear from you, I'm going to start by asking the Chief Justice some questions. But as I said, we'll leave plenty of time for all of you from the audience to ask questions. We have two microphones set up here so that we can capture your questions. I'll give you a little heads up when we're on the last question and people can begin to line up at their microphones and we'll just go from one to the other and ask questions. As I said, this is a very important year for your connection to Harvard Law School because it is the, and I hope you won't mind my saying, 40th anniversary of your receiving the LLM degree. Don't worry, I'm older. I have already had my 40th law school reunion. It is also the 100th anniversary of our graduate programs, which have now trained many outstanding lawyers from around the world, but particularly from India. Some of whom are in this very room, including Anurag Bhaskar, who is sitting in the front row, who I had the pleasure of having be my student after he had been the Chief Justice's law clerk and now is working back with the Supreme Court. I wonder if you wouldn't mind just reflecting a little bit about what this experience here, the LLM, and then followed by the SJD, both on your time here, but also what it's been for you as you've gone on through your career. Thank you very much, David. Let me begin by saying that it's a great honor to receive this award from the Center for Legal Profession of the Harvard Law School. I think that's possibly the greatest honor that I could have imagined to receive in my life from my own alma mater. It's really very special to be here this evening, and many thanks for inviting me and for making this possible. Let me begin by saying that the two standout memories which I have of the time that I spend here, of course, I have memories of the amazing professors who taught me. But the two standout memories which I must begin with, which have helped me a great deal in life, is first and foremost, watching the movie, The Paper Chase, which was very popular just about the time that I came to Harvard. The final scene in The Paper Chase is when everybody gets there mark sheets at the end of the year and they make paper rockets out of the mark sheets and they let them fly. It's very symbolic, I think you use your education and what you've acquired at the law school to literally fly in whichever way you want to for the rest of your life. I think that was very symbolic for me. The second thing, which I'm sure a lot of you would agree, is that navigating the tunnel helped me navigate the complexities of the law later on in my life, walking through the tunnel right now just and reminded me how difficult it was then and how difficult the law can be. In so many ways, my years at the law school were not just informative, but they were formative, and my engagement as a student at the law school shaped in very critical ways, my own engagement with the entire rights discourse. I think what I have had interface with as a professional lawyer and then as a judge for the last 23 years, I'm the longest standing judge in India now with 23 years in the profession. All goes back to learning about rights at Harvard Law School. Those were years of the Critical Legal Studies Movement. I think it had an indelible impact in my mind. My SJD thesis was on affirmative action and as part of my SJD thesis, I spent hours and days at Widner researching on philosophical issues in affirmative action programs, which was incidentally the first chapter of my SJD thesis. I went on in the course of that SJD thesis to write something which I have encountered as a judge, particularly of the Supreme Court, and which is the importance of merit, and does affirmative action in that sense dilute merit or is it a facet of merit? I think I wrote then as an uninitiated student, what I have reiterated probably 40 years down the line, which is that affirmative action brings greater inclusion to our societies and is therefore a facet of merit, and it doesn't detract from merit for the simple reason, that putting groups of marginalized citizens in our societies into important positions of responsibility is really fostering merit. That was my interface as a student. As a lawyer, I believe that my insights as a student at the law school help me in terms of the litigation which I had a preference for. I did a lot of litigation involving the rights of religious and linguistic minorities. I work for the HIV positive workers. I had interface with the freedom of speech and expression. Much of the work, as lawyers, you don't really get the work which you desire. Particularly when you're young, you have to do everything that comes into your plate. But nonetheless, as you progress in your profession, you branch out into areas which are of interest to you. I think the work which I did here as a student really enabled me to take up areas of interest. Then finally, as a judge, I think my foundational understanding of rights moved from a purely positivist mold into a more public policy mold based on much of the learning at the law school because I came to look upon the law as an instrument of social transformation, I think much of our Constitution, the Indian Constitution was at one level, of course, a document which witnessed the transfer of political power from a colonial regime to a new independent regime in independent India. But there's more to the Constitution than just that. The Constitution is really first and foremost document which seeks to bring about a social transformation. In my dialogue with my professors, whether it was Professor Lauden Stribe's five-credit course in constitutional law or engaging with Professor John Mansfield and Professor Lance Liebman who were my supervisors for the SJD here on law and policy and law and social change, or whether it was just auditing a class by Roberto Unger in those days. I think it gave me a new dimension about the law. Significantly, and I'll close with that, otherwise, I could spend the next hour talking about my experience at Harvard. I feel that the impact of the education which I received at Harvard Law School has been different at different stages of my life. The impact which it had when I was a researcher was very different from the impact it had when I was a law student or when I was a law teacher in India, and it was very different when I became a practitioner of law. Now I see the unfolding of that in the work which I have done as a judge, Whether it's in terms of the work which I did on recognizing the right to privacy as a fundamental constitutional right, or in terms of the work on gender equality, which we have done as judges of the Supreme Court in opening up, say, the armed forces to permanent commissions for women in Indian society. I feel that the impact of your education doesn't cease at a particular point of time in your life, but that continues to be your constant friend, ally, and partner through your working life in your own evolution as an individual. I see traces of that coming every day into my life as I evolve with new experiences which I encounter as a judge and as a citizen above all of our nation. That's a perfect segue to what I want to ask you a little bit about next because to go from being a law student yourself and being exposed to the issues here, to now being in charge of at least overseeing legal education in India, and you and I, I've had the great honor because of you to be on a commission to look at NLSIU Bangalore, which is most people would say the premier. I'm sorry, I'm going to upset people who went to other national law schools and other schools. One of the premier law schools in all of India at a time in which, when you say the phases of your life, but now the changes in the legal profession that are going on that we're trying to prepare students for. Changes like technology and the use of artificial intelligence and ChatGPT, which most of these students are already using whether they admit it or not, just joking, not really, or access to justice at a time in which that access is even more important, or how to build sustainability into the work of lawyers. I wonder how you think about the changing realities of law and legal practice as you think about how we ought to be structuring legal education for these students today. David, my perception is, and I may possibly be wrong, and this may be only reflective of a part of reality that I have encountered. The law has its own discipline. All of us as lawyers, as academics, as judges, are conscious of the fact that the law has its own discipline and a very significant discipline. But it would be incorrect to postulate the law as a discipline which is complete in itself. I think today more than ever, we realize the interconnectedness of law with society and with issues which go beyond the law. Whether it's in the context of emerging technologies or whether the intricacies of international law and international bargaining. Or whether it's in the context of regulatory developments which are taking place all across our societies. Or just sustainable environmental policies. I think it's important that as we look forward to the future of legal education, we need to give our students this very broad based understanding of the interconnectedness of the law with various other aspects of social endeavor, without which the law could be really incomplete. Much as though we are being shaped by technology today, I think we still confront whether it's in the context of a very highly developed and prosperous society like the US or societies such as ours in the global South. We still have very serious issues of access to justice confronting us. Access to justice, particularly to those who are not resourced. Access to justice, to whom social progress has left behind. Access to justice to communities which are marginalized. Legal education needs to reconnect and to make students understand this fundamental connect between access to justice and the law. For instance, the Harvard pro bono program, which gives students the skills necessary to talk to people from underprivileged backgrounds, help them resolve issues, say, in the Boston area. I think I look upon this as a key because legal education has to have two very central components. A substantive component about making students gain insights into substantive law. One thing which we learned at Harvard was Harvard taught us less about what the law is and more about how to think about the law. I think the ability to think about the law was crucial in terms of the substantive content. But going beyond the substantive content, it's equally important to give students a background in the practical skills necessary for good lawyering. Those practical skills must necessarily include access to justice. Law schools do have a very vital role to play in promoting access to justice. In enabling students to come face to face with lived realities of our citizens and to enable them to access their rights. Because students also they're interface with law, with law at a point of time when they're not as cynical. I think it's important that we tap the potentialities of the young at a point of time in their lives when they're not cynical, when they are conscious of the potentialities of the law and to enable them to reach out to citizens who are in distress. Another area which we need to focus on is the laws relationship to a more diverse and inclusive society. A lot of times people ask me today a question as to why don't we have more women judges in the Supreme Court? When I look at this question, it's a very profound question. One of the answers which I have thought of, and which I put forth as a point of discussion is that the state of our institutions of governance today are reflective of the state of the profession. Say two decades ago or maybe three decades ago. I was at Harvard Law School 40 years ago. I'm now helming the Indian judiciary 40 years later. The groundwork which we lay down today in terms of legal education, will ultimately determine the cause of our societies. Not 40 years down the line, that's too long a period. But certainly 20 years down the line because the inclusion that we ensure in terms of the student body which comes into our law schools, will determine who occupies important positions of responsibility in the legal profession, and in areas of governance. For instance, in India today, in most of our states, when we are recruiting district judges, over 50% of the fresh recruits are women. In some states it's going up to 60% or 70%. While on the one hand you have fewer and fewer women who have been appointed recently to say the higher judiciary, the figure is completely different. The face of the Indian judiciary is very different at the grassroots where you're recruiting 60 or 70%. Why is that happening? That's happening because of the fact that we have democratized access to legal education. I do believe that democratizing access to legal education is the key if we are to witness a social transformation in our societies. It's by this process of what I call democratizing access, of ensuring that wider and wider groups of citizens from diverse cross sections of society have the benefit of participating in legal education. That we would look at a broader social transformation. One of the examples is my former law clerk whom you mentioned, Anurag Basker, who is now with the Center for Research and Planning in the Supreme Court. They've put together this organization called Seed. This is an effort of freshly graduated students as Anurag was when he set this up to get students from marginalized backgrounds into law schools. Give them internships, give them good placements, watch them and mentor them through their initial part of the legal careers. There's a lot to be done in terms of a collaboration between law schools and private organizations and private initiatives like Seed has been able to do in India to ensure that we broaden the base of the pyramid and to ensure that the base of the pyramid in the legal profession is indeed diverse and inclusive. I believe that that's the key to having greater diversity and inclusion in our societies in the future. One of the things that your wonderful comments here reflect, of course, is that the judiciary and the courts are becoming more and more central to thinking about issues of inclusion and access and opportunity and what society we will have. We've seen that in our country, but you certainly are seeing that in your country in terms of the cases that are coming to you to be decided. Yet the judiciary has a particular role to play within a constitutional framework in addressing those problems. I think everyone in this room knows that you just decided a case which raises these questions about what is the role of courts in creating a more inclusive society particularly around issues of homosexuality and same sex marriage and LGBTQI rights, which you have been engaged in now for some time. What are the limits of that role? I wonder without revealing anything about the discussions within the court, how do you think about that balance in these cases? David ll social transformation takes place in a continuum. I do believe that in much of the work that we do as judges, you cannot really regard what you say as the last word in the subject or the end of the process of evolution. I think all of us as judges have to realize that the work which we do work which has relevance in a temporal space at a particular point of time. For instance, in the context of the LGBTQ issue that you raised in 2018, I was party to that case which is reported as Nate Johor, where we dealt with the constitutional validity of Section 377 of the Penal Code, which was a part of Macaulay's 1860 Indian Penal Code a a colonial era law. Endorsed with what I would call as Victorian morality, which made it a penal offense to engage in carnal intercourse against the order of nature. Now, the Delhi High Court had read it down to exclude relationships between consulting adults of the same gender. The Supreme Court had reversed the Delhi High Court, and the case came back to us several years later in 2018. Initially, while deciding upon whether the right to privacy is a part of a constitutionally protected right, we tacitly cast doubt on the judgment of our own court, which was delivered just a few years earlier, and that's why I say that all social transformation is transformation in a continuum. Eventually, in 2018, we began the dialogue by saying that the section was unconstitutional to the extent that it prevented adults of the same gender from having consensual relationships. That was the judgment in 2018. Which you were the lead author. I wrote a judgment in that case. Then we have, of course, the recent judgment where we were petitioned by groups of queer couples and queer individuals who sought the right to marry. Now, I'm not here to, of course, either critique my judgment, or least of all, defend my judgment, because I think that's for contemporary academics and society and for the posterity to judge. That's no part of the work of a judge, but I'll just briefly tell you what the issues were without meaning to be either patronizing or trying to defend what we have done. On a certain aspect of the case I was in the majority, on a large part of the case, I was in a minority of two. We have in India the Special Marriage Act, which was enacted in the early 1950s. The idea of the Special Marriage Act was to provide a legal framework for couples who belong to different faiths or different casts to get married in a secular law, under the terms of a secular law, without having to forsake your religion. Briefly, the submission of the petitioners before us was, read the Special Marriage Act, so that instead of man and woman, you read it as meaning spouse. Because the Special Marriage Act has different requirements where a man has to enter into a marriage under the act and a different set of requirements for women, whether it's in terms of degrees of prohibited relationships or minimum ages of marriage. When we decided the case, we felt that a lot of what the petitioners were seeking from the court, was too complex in terms of what the court could do in the exercise of the power of judicial review, because it is impossible for the court to distinguish what was claimed under the Special Marriage Act from the wider implications for personal law, because apart from the Special Marriage Act, marriage is something which is governed by custom. It is also governed by personal laws, which traverse a whole segment of our religious communities. This was on whether there is a fundamental right to marry. All five of us came to the conclusion that marriage has entitlements which are valuable because those entitlements are recognized by statute. It is no part of the function of the court in the exercise of its power of judicial review to hold that because those entitlements have become valuable, because they are statutory entitlement, because as a consequence to raise them to the level of a fundamental right. We all concluded by holding that there is no fundamental right to marry. But where we then dispersed into two groups, three on one side and two on the other was my judgment, where I held that even if there is no fundamental right to marry, the right into a cohabitational abiding union is a right which traces itself to the constitution. I traced and my colleague, justice call the two of us, he and his concurring judgment. We trace the right to enter into a union into constitutional foundational principles, namely, the right to life and personal liberty under Article 21, the right to form associations under the Indian Constitution under Article 191 C, and we said the right to form an association does not only include the right to form a trade union, but certainly a right to form an abiding personal union with a partner of your choice. The right to conscience. The right to conscience provision in the Indian Constitution rises together with the freedom of religion where we said that the right to freedom of conscience includes the right to freedom of religion, but religion is a facet of conscience and conscience is much broader. It could also include the right of same sex couples to enter into a union of an abiding nature. Three of our colleagues differed and they said that you cannot allow for raising the right to form a union into a constitutional status. But for me, and that's what I said, there's a classical phrase in civil law, which is that you'll be just medium if there's a right, there has to be a remedy. I said it's not enough for constitutional courts to lay down rights without remedies. Therefore, in my judgment, which eventually became a part of the dissent, we gave a series of remedies for queer couples. But going beyond this, and I think I'll take it forward from the first part of your question, courts are not just today, becoming important focal points for the exercise of judicial review in the conventional sense, I do believe that courts are also becoming an important focal point as a platform for dialogue in society. Why is that happening? It's no part of my function as a judge to hazard answers, but I see this happening every day. Where groups of citizens engage with us as judges and our institutions as institutions of public governance, simply to have a dialogue. I think this dialogue which is taking place in our courts, this dialogue is vital to the sustenance of democracy and the rule of law. But often courts cannot go the full end of the relief which our citizens seek, but I believe that that is not the end of the process, because by fostering that dialogue, we create spaces in society for citizens to take that dialogue forward. We highlight that dialogue, we give that dialogue a constitutional understanding, conscious as we are of the separation of powers. We work within the fold of democratic systems governed by the rule of law, where we have co equal branches of the government which are equally responsible for governance in society namely, parliament and the state legislatures in a federal system like ours, the executive which has a duty to enforce the law. It's important that we as judges also realize, and that society also realizes, that there is a line which we have to constantly draw as judges. That line drawing exercise, I think is equally important to sustain the legitimacy and credibility of courts as institutions because it's important that society doesn't recognize us as being possible avenues to take over the functions of the legislature and the executive. We are not equipped to do that as judges. A, we are not elected. We are not accountable to the electorate, which is not to say that we don't have a function in constitutional parlance. We have a vital role to play in constitutional parliaments, but our role must be understood as the role of judges. I think we must, therefore, create a democratic space for discussion, for dialogue, and for possibly fostering that dialogue into the evolution of our own societies in the near and not to distant future. These issues, as everyone in the room knows who's been spending time here in the United States, are right on the forefront here in America. But I would say in many other countries around the world, and this is the 75th anniversary, as I said, of the Indian Supreme Court, and I wonder as you reflect on this complex balance that you just laid out for us, are there lessons from those 75 years that could be valuable, not just for the next 75 years and more of India Supreme Court, but for Supreme Courts everywhere, where people are raising questions about the legitimacy and the role and the power, either undo or not enough, that Supreme Courts are having. We're seeing protests in the streets around the world on these various issues. What can we learn from India's 75 years of which your family has played a critical role in many of them. One of my favorite books, actually, which has made a big impact in my life in my work as a judge, is Albie Sachs: The Strange Alchemy of Law and Life. The point which I gather from the book, and which has really impacted me a great deal, is that, courts have a vital role to play in the preservation of the rule of law. As institutions which promote reason, dialogue, and therefore, foster a culture of tolerance, of inclusion, we have a very vital role in ensuring the stability of our societies. At a certain level, you can look at the role of the court in terms of the substantive law which we lay down, which is important in itself. But looking beyond just the substantive role which we play in terms of laying down legal doctrine or legal jurisprudence, I think there's something more fundamental which is at play. That courts are the center of entertaining citizen's grievances, bringing those grievances within the framework of law, allowing for a reason dialogue, and in promoting that reason dialogue, I think we foster essential democratic values, which is that, we respect the right of others not to agree with us, and we respect the right of others to have different points of view. This constant flux of dialogue that takes place in the court is an important area where you can produce a more socially cohesive society, and to look at societies across the world where you don't have the benefit of this, where instead of the rule of law, you find recourse to arms, a recourse to violence. The reason why you find that societies like ours, even today, 75 years down the road from independence, societies which have sustained democracy, and I think I'm proud of being a part of our society, is because of our ability to sustain dialogue and reason. I think courts have a very valuable role to play in promoting that culture of understanding, the culture of reasoned dialogue, and reasoned decision making. But going beyond that, the lessons which we've learned, the Supreme Court of India, David, is both a final Court of Appeal and a constitutional court. Much of the work which we do is really, in that sense, bifurcated between our work as an appellate court and the work which we do as a constitutional court. The great challenge which we face, and which I perceive as Chief Justice of the Supreme is, how do you balance between this huge inflow of cases which is coming into us every day. Because our court was modeled by our constitution on the access to justice model where we didn't want to shut the doors out to our citizens, so how do you balance that role between this huge volume of cases which comes into the court, which the time and the space which we need to create for yourself to write important judgments on matters of principle, which are going to affect the course of our societies. Just to give you a little bit of trivia, between 9th of November last year that when I took over as Chief Justice and 20th of October, we had about 50,000 new cases filed in the Supreme Court of India. The exact figure I have on my cell phone, which I don't want to pull out now. [LAUGHTER] It's about 50,200. We have disposed of within this period, 34 judges, and we have a few shot at the present point of time, we have disposed of every one of those 50,000 plus cases short of about 50 or 75. That's the work volume that we have to deal with. I don't think any other Supreme Court in the world has to deal with that volume of work. At the same time, we have to create that space for ourselves to do the work which is going to make an impact on what we, as judges, believe the future of a good society for the future should be. One of my missions as the Chief Justice has been to set up a permanent constitution bench. We are pretty much are on track to do that. We've been hearing important constitutional cases, setting up benches of three or five or seven. Actually five or seven, to deal with important constitutional cases which we've been hearing. These are cases where we've been dealing with cases across the political and the legal spectrum, where they deals with Indian federalism, human rights, gender and the law, sexuality, interesting cases which look to the future. The key is really to find this balance. To find the balance where you dispose of and deal with important those small issues putting to individual citizens. Then looking at the broader context of what's necessary in the life of the nation. Our Justices thought they were overworked when they had 200 cases. But moving right along. I'm going to ask the Chief Justice one more question. Then we're going to open it up for questions from the audience. If you can begin to make your way to one of the two microphones here. If you have a question and it really Chief Justice builds on what you just said, because this is actually marking the end of your first year as Chief Justice. You've already spoken to us about many initiatives that you've undertaken in that year. Although I happen to know there are many more that haven't yet been mentioned. I wonder if you might just say a word about anything that is important for this audience that you haven't mentioned. But more importantly, what you see as the important initiatives that you hope to do in the next few years. Because one of the things about India as we spoke about, that is a function of its past for better and for worse. I think for, as you see our life tenure, you can see both sides of that coin, 65 is when you is mandatory retirement. Say a little bit about sort of looking back, but really more about the people. The Chief Justice of India is a judge first and foremost, because I do believe that the critical part of your work as Chief Justice of India is the work which you do as a judge. That's where you are giving a certain degree of vision for the judiciary, but that's only one part of the function of the Chief Justice of India. The Chief Justice of India is not in charge because we have a federal nation, but is overseeing the work in so many ways. The administrative work which is being done by the High Courts and by the district judiciary, by giving it a direction. One of the areas which has been critical to my work as Chief Justice of India on the administrative side, is to use technology to foster access to justice. Because I do believe that technology today has a huge potential for promoting access to justice. As chairperson of the e-Committee of the Supreme Court. I'm chairing a committee which looks after all the technology needs of 18,000 courts in India. When the COVID-19 pandemic descended, we were able to build up on the robust infrastructure, which we have in terms of technology, for running the entire system on a video conferencing platform. We couldn't have just shut our doors and deny access to justice during the years of COVID. That's something that we did. But just to tell you about a few of the initiatives which I have adopted, we have begun to live stream our proceedings in important constitutional cases. Because I do believe that live streaming our proceedings has enabled us to reach out to our citizens. Because citizens have a right to know what's going on in the portals of the Supreme Court of India. By live streaming our proceedings, I think we've been able to engender debate and a broader sense of confidence about the reason dialogue which takes place in the work of the Supreme Court of India. Another area where we have used technology, is that we have about 34,000 judgments of the Supreme Court since independence, all of which were in English. We are using AI assisted machine learning translation modules to translate each of these judgments of the Supreme Court in every Indian language, which is recognized in the Constitution. The idea is that we must be able to reach out to citizens because English is of course, the language where judges speak, and we work in that language, and lawyers speak in the higher judiciary. But that's not the language in which most Indians are comfortable. How do we make our work relevant to our societies? That's where we are using machine learning. We have been encouraging live transcripts of our proceedings. The Constitution bench cases, which we heard, which we have been hearing in the recent past, are simultaneously arguments are being transcribed through machine learning and then put out on the website at the end of the day, which would form an important resource. I daresay even for legal education, in terms of how was this case argued? What was the strategy? How did the judges really navigate through the complex issues in these cases? Apart from the fact that it's a reach out factor for citizens, for lawyers involved in the case, for us as judges to help us at the end of the arguments and seeing what was argued. Live transcription has been part of that. We have been launching a complete digital transformation of the Indian judiciary. In the Supreme Court of India for instance, now we have E-filing. The High Courts have taken up to E-filing. All cases ought to be at the end of this year, E-filed. The first three courts in the Supreme Court of India have a completely entirely paperless module. When I was hearing the Constitution bench cases recently, all five of us and recently a few weeks ago, all seven of us were completely in a paperless mode. We just concluded hearing in the issue pertaining to Article 370 of the Constitution. We have reserved judgment. I can't speak about the substantive issues which are involved in the case. But I must tell you that the record in that case was 50,000 pages. In a traditional sense, if you had five judges hearing a record of 50,000 cases, you can imagine how difficult it would have been. But all of us had the entire record digitized and we are now in the process of digitizing the entire records of all the High Courts in India. The entire case load, both decided cases and pending cases before our courts are now on the National Judicial Data Grid. Which is a data grid which covers the entirety of the case load of the Indian judiciary. The importance of the NJDG as we call it, and the Supreme Court has also now put out all its data on the National Judicial Data Grid, is that we are opening ourselves out. We want citizens to critique the work which we do, not just in terms of the substantive work which we are doing, but also in terms of our efficiency in answering the challenges which we face. I do believe that if we open up our data to citizens, we'd have a lot more of private initiatives or public private partnerships. The last thing that I would mention on this, and there's so much more that I could tell you about, is that the entirety of our work on technology in the Indian judiciary has been on a free and open source platform. None of the software which we have used is proprietary software. We have customized our software because I do believe that in a society like ours. We must use free and open source software, which we have been using for the purpose of much of the work on technology that we are doing. Apart from the work which I do as Chief Justice India. In terms of work as a Judge, there's so much more that we are doing in terms of opening up our processes using technology. We recently came out with a handbook on gender, which I'd like to share with you in just 30 seconds. A lot of discourse in the law is very stereotypical of gender and marginalized groups. I found this over the years in terms of the language which is used to particularly describe women survivors of sexual violence. We have used this gender handbook to indicate to judges why the use of particular terms is inappropriate. Not just politically inappropriate, but why is it inappropriate in contemporary times. For instance, to just give you one simple example, Why should you not call a career woman in a judgment, which you see repeated almost ad nauseum? Why do we, in terms of say, a woman who is the victim of her sexual assault. Why is it that certain words are inappropriate? Because they reveal way deep rooted patriarchal stereotypes. We have tried to answer that in the gender handbook. Over the last year, we have conducted a physical audit. An audit in terms of accessibility and accessibility audit of the Supreme Court and my colleague who just retired has just presented his report to me. We're going to implement it immediately, whether it's in terms of accessibility to the disabled, accessibility to women, accessibility to women who are pregnant, accessibility to senior citizens. The idea is to make the Supreme Court of India a more reachable, accessible court in the work which we do. There's so many amazing things there that I'm sure people will want to pick up on. But let's go to questions here. We're going to go here and then to you, please. If you could just say who you are just very briefly. Yeah. Good evening, sir. It's a pleasure. I'm Manish. I work with KPMG India doing my advanced management program at Howard Business School. Sir, I think before I ask my question, this handbook that you talked about, I don't see this as a legal part. It is a handbook that every citizen should really read about. You have done a very great job to my mind. Especially in the Indian society conflict. My question to you sir, is that in today's world where the social media, every case before it lands your desk is widely debated, discussed majority of the time. I think once it lands your desk, how do you insulate yourself of something that you would have read about the case? You would have a point of view as you start going into the complexity of the case because most of these are very challenging complex cases. How do you keep that point of view may not be a bias aside to be so focused on that? Because as a business leaders, that's a very important and a rare skill, not easy to come by. Thank you. Thank you. Before the advent of the social media. Typically as judges, we would have four or five, a half a dozen journalists in our court. With social media, we have a million journalists, who are live reporting on what's happening in the court virtually by the minute, not at the end of the day. That just sums up what we have to encounter. Well, I don't think you have a choice. Technology is no longer a choice and therefore social media is not a choice. We're working in a society where we have the prevalence of the social media. Yes, the social media does create issues for us as judges. Much of what goes on in the court is a dialogue between the bench and the bar. Very often you have two types of judges. You have judges who play the devil's advocate, who tell the lawyer why they are wrong in the proposition which they are making to draw out the best of the lawyer and then you have another type of judges. The second type is judges who would restate what the lawyer is saying and take it to its logical conclusion. Very often what happens in the social media is when you say something in the court, somebody who's not in the court but is reporting something which the judges are saying, take what the judge is saying as a possible judgment of the court and that creates a problem. Because what is being debated in the court is a debate it's not a verdict or it's not a point of view. What I say in the course of arguments may not, in fact, be the line of final conclusion which I'm going to take, but which I'm testing for the purposes of a dialogue. That is a problem. The other area of social media, which is cause of very grave concern is criminal justice administration, because the evidence which will come at the course of the trial is yet to be recorded. There's a presumption of innocence, which we, in the Common Law World follow in the US, as in India, or in the UK, or in Australia, which is that no accused is presumed to be guilty and guilt arises only after a trial is concluded and judgment is delivered and person is found guilty. But were you often at the stage of investigation when even a chart sheet has not been submitted to the court? You have social media which is commenting on the merits of the guilt of the accused and the case is still under investigation by the police. When that case comes up before a court of first instance, there's a grave danger of justice being deflected. Well, it's easy for me as a judge to say that, well, we are trained to exclude all those ideas from our consideration and to a certain extent, that's right. I read the newspapers, and I'm not in Twitter, I'm not in X or on Facebook, but I certainly I'm trained to keep my reasoning as a judge distinct from what is expressed in the media. But I'm not sure that's so with the prevalence of the electronic media. A trial judge who's hearing a case is already flooded with news, views even at this stage of investigation, which takes us into broader areas as to whether there should be some form of regulation or whether self regulation is a correct thing. Very serious questions for the functioning for judges. But I think, yes, the way we are going at present is to ensure that we train our judges to be cognizant of the challenges which new technologies and particularly the social media, impose on us and our work, because we need to train judges. For instance, I was not born as a judge or for that matter, as a lawyer in the age of the social media. Many of us who are now part of the system just need to be trained. We need to reskill ourselves. We need to be more conscious about what we say in court when we are live streaming our proceedings because we're likely to be misconstrued. Thank you. Yes, please. Hello. I'm Shah Worth Polcari. I'm a Master students at the Kennedy School. I have a question. You have rightfully denied political involvement in court decisions, which is I agree with, nonetheless, the critics do point to delays in hearing cases that are politically sensitive, such as Article 370, the Canada Hijab Case as the master of the roaster. How would you respond to these criticisms? One of the first initiatives that I took was to ensure that we set up a constitutional bench, which will be running on a rolling basis through the year. My decision to set up a continuous constitution bench was partly in response to this critique that the Supreme Court needs to create more time and space to hear the more important substantive cases. Now, I must share with you, I'm conscious of the critique, but I must also share with you that there is a great amount of balancing which any head of the institution has to do. Because the moment you set apart a bench of say, seven judges, you're reducing seven judges off the 34 who are going to be hearing cases involving equally important grievances of citizens. Somebody denied their personal liberty, somebody seeking bail. A death row convict who wants an early hearing of their criminal appeal. Somebody sentenced to life imprisonment for say, an offense of murder, somebody sentenced to 14 years of jail for being involved in an offense under the Narcotics Act. The great challenge really is this, yes, on the one hand, you need to hear the big ticket if I may use that expression, cases involving substantive issues for the nation. But equally for us, as judges are important. Those cases which deal with individual grievances of citizens who come to access justice. A lot of Supreme courts across the world have drawn the balance in saying that, well, we'll deal with only 180 cases or 200 cases like David just mentioned about the US Supreme Court or the UK Supreme Court which would be hearing just about the same. We have on the one hand these 50,000 cases. Every time I have to set apart say, two constitutional benches, say, of 10 judges, my instinct as well, I'm taking 10 judges away, so that I'm left with only 24. If I'm left with 24 judges, and I'm operating with, say, three-judge bench benches, I have only eight benches to deal with the 50,000 cases in the year. It's important to create the space, as I said, but it's important that we understand that the work of the Supreme Court is also a work as a Court of Appeal and you can't lose sight of the other side of justice which we have to deal with. Thank you. Here. Thank you. Chief Justice Chandrachud. My name is Arvind. I'm a student here at the Harvard Law School. I have a question regarding judicial appointments. Earlier in this year, in January 17th you and the collegium headed by you had recommended a member of the ruling party as a judge for the High Court and subsequent media reports came out that this person had given hate speeches against Indian Muslims and Indian Christians. On the 2nd February, lawyers wrote to you asking you to withdraw the recommendation. We know the government was really pacing for her assumption of office. Given the time sensitive nature of this matter, why wasn't the collegium headed by you, at least, on the administrative side, able to withdraw that recommendation or at least, pending further review? Because the bench that you had constituted in which to look into this case, in paragraph nine of that judgment, had said that despite the representation given to the collegium, you all did not find it necessary appropriate to withdraw that recommendation. Thank you. I must say this, that we've been trying to promote transparency in the Collegium. Therefore, you find that all the resolutions which we passed in the Collegium, David the Collegium, just to give a broader understanding to people who are not conversant with the Indian system. The Collegium of Judges in the High Courts and in the Supreme Court recommend people who will be appointed as judges in the system. The final power of appointment rests with the President of India. But the collegium for appointments to the Supreme Court consists of the Chief Justice and the four CNMO judges. The coalitions and the High Court consist of the Chief Justice and the two CNMOs judges. They make recommendations, since we are a Federal country, those recommendations travel across the system from the High courts, they come to the state governments. The state governments will express their view from the state governments, they come into the Union government, they come to the Supreme Court. A thorough check is done on the antecedents and background of the candidate, so on and so forth. That's broadly, I don't want to get into the nitty gritty of the Collegium system, that's not the question. But I thought I'll just open it up so that people who are not conversant with the legal system in India know what the Collegium is all about. Now, I just wanted to answer the question by telling you this. That much though we have been promoting transparency in the Collegium and we put out our resolutions in the public domain, we are equally conscious of the fact, and I think people have to be conscious of the fact that when we decide on the future of people who are being appointed as judges, we are dealing with the lives of individuals as well. There is a public interest in understanding what is going on in the system. Why are people appointed? On what yardsticks are people appointed as judges? For one thing, we have put out the yardsticks on the basis of which we appoint judges into the public realm. Now, that's part of the resolutions which we put out on our website of the Supreme Court. Equally, it's important to understand that the reasons which may lead us to appoint or not appoint a particular judge individually have to deal with the several aspects of the personality of individual judges. The grave danger is that if we start putting out everything that goes in the process of appointing judges, good people will not accept judgeship. For the simple reason that if you're going to make the scrutiny which goes into appointing people to high judicial office is sometimes extremely trenchant as it has to be because we are recruiting people who will be judges for the next 15-20 years in the system. The level of scrutiny including into the personal lives of individuals which would have a bearing on their discharge of judicial duties, is extremely careful. Now, if we start putting out everything about the lives of individuals into the public realm, there's a grave danger that people would not be willing to accept judicial office. The particular case that your question raised, the reason why I began with this preface was for the reason that your question contains an inference, which is that the Supreme Court didn't look at the issue at all, including after it was drawn to our attention. I don't think that would be a very correct assessment. To say that, well, we didn't look into the aspect, then again, you have to really ask this, to what extent do you disable an individual from becoming a judge just by virtue of the fact that they have at a certain point of time appeared for a political cause? Lawyers across their careers appear for a cross section of clients. Lawyers don't choose their clients. In fact, it's my firm belief that as a lawyer, you're duty-bound to appear for whoever comes to you in search of legal aid, much as a doctor has to administer medical aid to whoever comes to their clinic. You don't presume the guilt or the lack of guilt of people who come to you. When we look at these kinds of cases, you said that particular person was a member of a political party, we looked at it very carefully. The nature of the speech which that judge is alleged to have made at a particular point of time, again, is looked at very carefully. One of the processes which we follow in the coalition is to ask for a report from the Chief Justice. If we are in doubt as the coalition, we go back to the Chief Justice of the High Court and we say, well, this has been drawn to our notice, would you please give us a brief report on whether this is true or false? We ask for a feedback, we share that feedback with the government. The process of pointing judges is therefore a fairly complicated process involving different layers of the federal system, the states, the Union, the governments in the states, the government in the Union of India, investigative agencies such as the Intelligence Bureau, which do a background check on the antecedents of an individual. This is a very broad-based collaborative process which is going on where no one arm of the state has a decisive role to play. Just to give you one example, one of our greatest judges, Justice Krishna, who came out with some of the finest judgments, had a political background. My own experience has been that judges who appeared for a cross-section of diverse political views across the spectrum have turned out to be amazing judges. I'm not sure whether we should be cold calling an individual merely for the views which they may have held as lawyers, because I do believe that there is something in our profession of judging that once you assume judicial office, whether it's peer training, the training which you undergo as judges, your experience as judges, there's something about this office which makes you dispassionate or which at least ought to make you dispassionate in terms of the work which you do, your interface with colleagues, your interface with the Bar. Particularly in a society like ours, which is an open society wedded to democratic ideals, the Bar, and the pressure of public opinion, the press, the media, these are important counterweights which ensure that judges are true to the oath and perform in accordance with the Constitution. Because every part of the work which we do as judges is being constantly evaluated and re-evaluated by civil society, by the media, and I think that's an important aspect of ensuring that judges work in terms of their constitutional mandate. Yes, please. Good evening, Chief Justice. I am Mayur, I'm a software engineer, I'm here with my wife, Pipa. I really appreciate the enhanced use of technology in the judicial system. I wanted to hear your thoughts on strategies to enhance legal literacy among general population in India because as a non-law professional, there's always hesitation while even thinking of seeking justice or entering in the legal system for anything. I'll answer the question very briefly. We have the National Legal Services Authority in India, which is a statutory legal aid authority. You have legal Aid Authorities in the states, the State Legal Services Authorities, and that goes down all the way to the districts, which have a very valuable role to play in propagating legal awareness and knowledge of legal services. But just going beyond the formal or the statutory mechanisms which are in place, I think the two areas which are full of promise and potential for the future. One is the use of technology. I think we can really explore how we can use AI for instance, by having say, chatbots. Somebody wants to file an insurance claim in the court. A woman who has been subjected to domestic violence wants to know how do I access my right to maintenance without going to a lawyer. I do believe that we can use AI to have very simple dissemination of legal knowledge by taking recourse to chatbots for propagating knowledge of legal formalities and very simple to understand language which citizens understand. The other area which we can explore is, of course, as I said in my presentation earlier, which is to have a greater engagement of legal education with legal aid and legal services by inviting law schools to reach out to communities and to have law clinics in legal communities in real life settings to promote access to legal services, greater decost to mediation. Mediation is now, of course, a very powerful tool for community resolution of disputes. These are some of the initiatives which can be taken to propagate better access to legal services. Thank you. Thank you, please. Hi, my name is Nikita and I'm a research fellow at a Center on Ethics at Harvard, and I research the mental health of litigating lawyers back home in India. You mentioned in the talk how democratizing access to education is one of the ways for reforming the legal profession, but especially given the top-down nature of litigation, even more so perhaps in corporate law in India currently. You've spoken in the past about systematic underpay, long work hours, the preeminent role that senior advocates play in the Supreme Court. I wanted to ask, apart from the democratizing access to education, which might help the supply of litigators entering the profession, what broad-scale reforms do you hope that judges and senior advocates themselves can perhaps try to start in the legal profession to make sure that people who come from more marginalized backgrounds are able to stay in litigation much longer than they currently can. I'll just say that Nikita is doing fantastic work on this. She was at the law school and now she's at the Ethics Center, and I know you care deeply about these issues. Thank you. Nikita, as we democratized legal education, one of our experiences was that more and more people who did not belong to illegal background have entered the profession of law. A lot more women have entered the profession of law in most of our national law schools and many more women than men entering into the fold of our entry point in law schools in India, and that's why I mentioned the district judiciary where you have many more women, 60 or 70% women entering the district judiciary. But coming to your question, what can we do? As the legal education became more broad based, you found that more and more young lawyers were going into the transactional workspace. The reason why young lawyers were joining the transactional space was simply because entry was much more meritocratic, and I say meritocratic with the caved which I entered right at the beginning. It enabled people to apply on an even platform and secure paid positions in law firms. My concern as a judge is of course, that they have to also come into the litigation space, which is what you've been speaking about. What can senior advocates do and what can judges do? I'll begin with judges because that's something which I can do myself. We have a program for recruiting of law clerks. Recruitment of law clerks was, again, until very recently, on a very informal network, which meant that you could get a position of a law clerk by knowing the judge or knowing someone who knew the judge. I felt that that was not the appropriate way of ensuring the broadest possible access to clerkships in the Supreme Court. Because clerkships in the Supreme Court are valuable apart from the pay which we of course give, which is a small part of it. Clerkships in the judiciary are very valuable as they have been in the US. Last year I put out a white paper which was not implemented, which I implemented after I became Chief Justice of India. This year, David you would be interested to know in terms of the legal profession center and legal profession. We held an entrance examination for recruitment of law clerks to the Supreme Court and rag in almost 20 centers across India. We had a two part examination, the first part consisting of MCQs, which were spread over 3 hours. The latter part was giving a very simple two research proposal and a brief for elucidating the key issues in a judgment under appeal to the Supreme Court. We had close to 4,000 people who applied for the examination this year, which was the first part of first year of its operation. After we had graded the examination papers and we had the paper setting and the paper grading not done by judges, but by a team of academics, which I had constituted from outside the Supreme Court, the papers were set by our academics across a few law schools in India. They were graded by those professors. After they were graded, we felt that that's when we would allow judges to rank students and hold an interview for selecting students. I do believe that we have been able to make the first inroad into democratizing access to judicial clerkships, which is what judges can do. The second and more important I think role which judges can play is something which I do, is that in the course of oral arguments, when I have a young lawyer presenting their case, I think judges have a lot to do in terms of mentorship, in terms of hearing young lawyers for a little longer than we hear senior counsel, ensuring that there's a level playing field when women lawyers appear. I've been noticing that on the hybrid hearing platforms, which we have in the court, a lot more women are using technologies such as video conferencing because women typically perform manifold responsibilities, so a lot of young women lawyers are accessing our arguments through video conferencing. That's another area which judges have been able to use for broadening the access to the profession. Senior advocates, the last part of your question, I think the key intervention which we have to make is to ensure that access to chambers in the litigation side must be equally meritocratic as access to the transactional space. Senior advocates must learn to advertise. If I'm a senior advocate, a barrister, I must really put out on the website of the Supreme Court Bar Association. How many positions I'm opening up this year. First, two, ensuring that there is some pattern of interviewing candidates who will be selected for enrollment, and third, paying real time salaries. In India, there's this perception that interns who come and work for you are interns who come to learn the law and therefore they need not be paid. That's a very poor model because you have to survive the profession, you have to survive a big city. Speaking for myself, I have learned as much from my law clerks and my interns as I have shared with them. Because every day that I interact with my interns, I realize how much there is for me to learn as a senior professional, as much as I share. I think there's a cultural mindset which has to change, which is that people who come into work into your office, of course, they're coming to learn because that's why they're there, the beginning of the profession. But they have much to share as well. There's a huge mindset which has to change. Chief Justice Chandrachud, this has been enormously enriching, and I'm conscious of the time. I know there are many other people at the microphones, but he is also here to be honored at Brandeis University, where he's giving a major lecture tomorrow in honor of the Indian Constitution and the father of the Indian Constitution. I'm going to actually take the prerogative of asking you to just close here with maybe some thoughts for these young people and people who are here in the United States about what you would hope that perhaps they could take or think about not just their time here, but how they can contribute to these deep and important issues that you've raised with us today. Well, I think the grave danger which all of us as lawyers face is to think about the present and the immediate future. Which is in a sense, natural. Because all of us as lawyers are keen on dealing with the cases which we are dealing with. Sometimes as we know, the legal profession can be extremely difficult in terms of timelines, stress management. That's why one of the areas which is of grave concern is issues relating to mental health. Something which I'd like to share with you, something which has stayed with me through my years, the last 40 years since I left Harvard Law School. Is A to look beyond the law and to have a more holistic understanding of the position of law in society. That's not just in the national context because so many of you would, I guess, be going back to your homes, whether it's India or beyond India. But it's important that you look at law in a global perspective, particularly in the times that we live in, which is highly networked. Of course, globalization does have its discontents, but it's important that we understand the discipline which we are learning and which we've learned and which is going to be a part of our lives in the broader global context in which that discipline is situated. The second, which I think is equally key, is to understand the interrelationship of law in a broader comparative context. Not just in the comparative context of comparative law, but in a comparative context which transcends just the law as a discipline, so whether it's in the context of law in history, or law in the economics or law in politics, it's been key for my work as a judge, I think, to understand law in the context of history or law in the context of its relationship with economics. Because increasingly the work which we are doing as lawyers and judges is deeply impacted by sectoral initiatives and sectors which are very different from our own. Our work as lawyers is deeply impacted, and is going to be impacted by developments in medicine in terms of the ethical issues which arise before us, in terms of work which we do as intellectual property lawyers, in terms of work which securities lawyers, in terms of work which we do as regulatory layers in areas of governance. I'd encourage each one of you to look beyond the law. But above all, I think in dealing with the stresses which each of us face and continue to face, it's important to be rooted and to have something in your life which gives you that sense of being rooted to reality without really having to lose yourself in the chaos which surrounds you. Whether as lawyers, as judges, as people who will be entering into areas of public governance. What your source of being rooted is going to be would typically be very personal to your lives. I'm not sure I can answer that. Each of us, I think, finds our own formula. But it's important to find that formula because I see so many young professionals today combating issues of mental health. In particular, I should have said that when we were dealing with the question on legal education, that I think law schools also need to devote a little bit more time on helping young professionals navigate issues of mental health, which are becoming more and more prominent to our times. I'd leave you with this thought that do find yourself your own sense of solace, what it is, whether its art, whether its literature, whether its music, that element of creativity in your own self, in your own person, is, I think, what really sustains you through the trials and tribulations of what is an exciting career in the law, but a challenging career at the best. Well, Chief Justice Chandrachud, may I speak for all of the people here that you have given us so much to reflect on, and I guess I will just say that if you keep yourself rooted in the wisdom of Justice Chandrachud, I think we will all go a long way to making a better world. Please help me to thank the Chief Justice. [APPLAUSE] Thank you so much. Thank you.
