Constitutional insts important to check abuse of power: CJI

New Delhi/Cambridge: Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud, in a recent lecture delivered at the Cambridge Law University, highlighted the importance of Constitutional institutions, without which the rights and values cannot be safeguarded, reported LiveLaw on Friday.

He was delivering a lecture on the topic “The relationship between Constitutional Rights and Constitutional Structure” as part of the Cambridge Pro Bono Project Annual Lecture on May 30.

In the lecture, the CJI focussed on four key aspects of the relationship between the citizen and state - Constitutional processes, institutional arrangements for governance, the scrutiny of actions as envisaged by and implicit in the Constitution, and the participation of citizenry in a democracy.

To illustrate the importance of Constitutional structures in protection rights, the CJI referred to famous satirical novella of George Orwell “The Animal Farm”. He pointed out that the governance in the “Animal Farm” fell apart because there “were no entrenched rules or institutions of governance, which led to an arbitrary exercise of power”.

Drawing an allegory from the novella, CJI said, “the rights regime in the Constitution would only be a parchment guaranteed if the Constitution does not establish a structure that effectively checks the exercise and abuse of power”.

For the Constitution to stand the test of time, alongside assigning the state the duty to protect the fundamental rights, it must also establish other institutions to create a system of governance, the CJI said. The system of governance envisaged under the constitution is as important as constitutionalism and the fundamental rights because it exercises a check on the powers of the state.

“The expansion of rights framework will be insignificant if the Constitution prescribes a weak form of governance, which does not ensure that the state exercises its power fairly or equitably, or the judiciary interprets the silences in the constitution and interpretative gaps in a manner that would weaken the system of governance”, he said.

Each institution meant as a check on the other institu-

tions.