New Delhi, Sep 5: Chief Justice of India (CJI) Surya Kant on Saturday described the Supreme Court-hosted BRICS Chief Justices’ Forum as a modern fabric woven with traditional threads, with a shared quest to seek solutions that serve humanity and envision a world where law can guide the river of development towards the ocean of shared prosperity.
Delivering the welcome address on the second day of the BRICS Chief Justices’ Forum attended by chief justices, presidents of supreme courts and senior judicial leaders from the BRICS member states and partner countries, CJI Kant said, “We are not merely a collection of jurisdictions, we are a fellowship of judicial minds, bound together by the shared belief that the enduring values of justice can meet the dynamic challenges of our time.”
Addressing the delegates, he said as guardians of constitutional principles and interpreters of their countries’ highest ideals, they have gathered here to inscribe a new chapter in the chronicles of international legal cooperation — one where the legacy of hallowed wisdom will meet the promise of modern law.
“The BRICS Chief Justices’ Forum, in its essence, is a modern fabric woven with traditional threads. Our discussions on a wide variety of subjects are rooted in a shared quest: to seek solutions that serve humanity and to envision a world where law can be the gentle yet unyielding current that guides the river of development towards the ocean of shared prosperity,” he said.
Highlighting the heritage of ancient Bharat, to the luminous halls of the world’s oldest Nalanda University, CJI Kant said the university drew scholars from across the very civilisations represented in this room — a monk who had walked from Tang China, students all the way from Korea, Tibet, Persia and the maritime kingdoms of Southeast Asia, all gathered within the great Dharmaganj library complex, said to have held nine million (90 lakh) manuscripts.
“Over a millennium ago, Nalanda was a beacon of intellectual inquiry, a sanctuary where intellectuals from distant lands convened to debate, exchange and refine ideas that transcended the boundaries of geography and culture,” he said.
He added that what made the Nalanda University truly unique was that it never asked its scholars to first agree upon a common system of law or philosophy before it admitted them.
“It rather offered a healthy and hospitable space for disagreement and deliberation,” he said, adding that centuries before any group of nations sat down to discuss pathways to growth, India had attempted the harder experiment — bringing together different schools of thought to engage with each other directly, instead of just observing one another from a distance.
“That, I would submit, is the truest precedent for what the BRICS Forum now seeks to do,” the CJI said, adding that the same spirit carries directly into what brings the delegates together today.
“Economic progress, technology, dispute resolution and sustainable energy are each spoken of as engines, driving the BRICS and the partner countries forward. I would postulate that these are not four separate engines running in parallel. They rest upon a single foundation, and that foundation is the timely and predictable delivery of justice,” he said.
CJI Kant highlighted that the delegates’ role, as representatives of the justice-delivery system, is much like that of a load-bearing wall within a building.
“No architect ever photographs it for the brochure, and yet no building stands without it. That, precisely, is the place judicial systems occupy in the life of a nation,” he said, adding that every jurist in the room will recognise instantly that when a foreign investor cannot be sure how swiftly or how fairly a dispute will be resolved in a given jurisdiction, that uncertainty directly burdens the contract in the form of higher risk premiums, added securities and stringent exit clauses.
He said it becomes, in every practical sense, an unwritten punitive cost of doing business, one that no legislature ever imposed, yet every investor ends up paying. However, courts that deliver judgments swiftly, consistently and in language the world can rely upon are capable of removing that hidden cost altogether, the CJI asserted.
