Review: Justice For The Judge: An Autobiography

Justice For The Judge: An Autobiography by Ranjan Gogoi
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Hooter: Autobiography of a former Chief Justice of India

For a legal layman, the first half of this book provided me insights into the working of the legal system as Gogoi traces the journey from Dibrugarh to Delhi - college days to entering the law profession. Through his journey, he highlights the working of the court and reasons why certain things happened in a certain manner - like how he missed out on making it to High Court before hitting 40 and finally did around the average age a HC judge usually falls under for elevation.

There is privilege at play through his journey for having come from a politically connected family which often people with privilege don't realise for that's the world they have been in and assume as baseline. The second half of the book seems like Ranjan Gogoi providing his justifications across all the controversies that surrounded him and his thought process through some of the landmark cases he handled as CJI including the Ayodhya Ram Mandir / Babri masjid one, followed by the CAA one and some very high profile ones. Interesting trivia was the introduction of single bench Supreme Court hearings with Sushant Singh/ Rhea Chakraborty one being the first case heard by a single SC judge.

The importance of dates in legal profession especially for promotions was not lost in this book as numerous judges who make the roll call in this book have their dates of joining and retirement highlighted to again justify their elevations at the time that they were. What I probably need to read more on is the dismissal of elevations on the basis of average income being 7 LPA .

Overall, if you are complete layman, you get some hints on the workings of the system and his justifications to media headlines that surrounded his career all through.

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