Only 1/3rd of India's Supreme Court judges have been first-generation lawyers

Hindustan Times

14-05-2025

Outgoing Chief Justice of India (CJI) Sanjiv Khanna could have been a part of a small club among the 51 CJIs India has had so far but for a landmark case in the history of Indian jurisprudence. Justice Khanna's uncle, Justice Hans Raj Khanna, was a Supreme Court judge during the Emergency. He was the lone dissenter among five judges who ruled in the ADM Jabalpur case (in the government's favour) that the fundamental right of Habeas Corpus could be suspended during the Emergency. As an act of vendetta, he was superseded by Indira Gandhi's government despite being in line to become the CJI.
Six out of India's 51 CJIs (Justice BR Gavai, who takes over as the 52nd CJI today hasn't been counted in this exercise) so far are either father-son or uncle-nephew pairs. The number of judges with close family relations to each other among all 279 Supreme Court judges India has had so far is much larger: there are 16 such pairs. On the other hand, more than one-third of India's Supreme Court judges have been first-generation lawyers.
These numbers give an interesting entry point into the long-standing debate about how inclusive or closed the club of India's Supreme Court judges is. The question has gained more salience after a 1993 law transferred the right to appoint judges from the executive to the judiciary.
This three-part data journalism series will throw more light on the appointment of Supreme Court judges in India and debates about the highest judiciary's representativeness or lack of it. HT has prepared a complete database of all 279 Supreme Court judges India has had since 26 January 1950, the day both the Republic and the Supreme Court came into being.
The first part of the series will look at the links between India's Supreme Court judges. The second will look at the representation of various social groups and High Courts among Supreme Court judges. The concluding part will examine whether the introduction of the Collegium system resulted in any changes to these patterns.
The list of current and previous Supreme Court judges has been taken from the Supreme Court of India's website (https://www.sci.gov.in/chief-justice-judges/ and https://www.sci.gov.in/former-chief-justice-judges/). The website itself gives a basic biographical profile of the judges. This information has been complemented with already existing literature such as George H Godbois Junior's 2011 book Supreme Court Judges of India (1950-1989) -- it has profiled 93 Supreme Court judges -- and Abhinav Chandrachud's 2018 book Supreme Whispers: Conversations with Judges of the Supreme Court of India. In addition to it, over 150 Supreme Court and High Court archival records, including Full Court References, have been used to gather biographical details of justices. While the Supreme Court and High Court records do not publish caste/religion data for judges, this information has been collected through other sources using multiple cross-checks.
The list includes judges who have served in the Supreme Court and are either father-son, uncle-nephew, father-in-law-son-in-law, grandfather-grandson, or father-daughter pairs. Eleven in this list have served as the CJI, and this number will increase to 12 (6 pairs) when Justice B V Nagarathna, who is in line to become the CJI in 2027, takes office.
While family relations between Supreme Court judges are an obvious case of the judiciary being a closed club, the network effects behind the appointments of India's Supreme Court judges could be much larger. Less than a third of India's Supreme Court judges (104 of 279) were first-generation practitioners of the legal profession. To be sure, the ratio is slightly higher for CJIs (17 of 51). Given the fact that a next-generation lawyer often inherits the practice and networks of the previous one, having a legal background is considered a huge advantage in the legal profession. HT's database has defined someone as a non-first-generation legal professional if they had an older close relative (father, mother, brother, father-in-law, brother-in-law, uncle) as a lawyer or judge. This list has been prepared in keeping with the database methodology described above.
This is the first of a three-part data journalism series on India's Supreme Court judges. The second part will look at the social and high-court backgrounds of Supreme Court judges. The third part will look at whether the introduction of the Collegium system changed the nature of these appointments.