Well Argued · Landmark Win

Supreme Court Advocates-on-Record Association v. Union of India (2015): the case, the argument and the legacy

Updated for 2026 · Claw Editorial

In 2015 the Supreme Court did something rare: it struck down an amendment to the Constitution that Parliament had passed almost unanimously, and the law built on it, the National Judicial Appointments Commission. At the heart of it was a single question. Who should choose the judges of India's higher courts, and can that choice be shared with the government without endangering the independence of the judiciary? This is the story of that fight, not a full law report.

01What was at stake

For years, judges of the Supreme Court and the High Courts were appointed through the collegium, a body of senior judges whose recommendations the government largely had to accept. The collegium was criticised as opaque and clubby. In response, Parliament passed the 99th Constitutional Amendment and the NJAC Act, replacing the collegium with a commission that included the Chief Justice, two senior judges, the Law Minister, and two eminent persons chosen by a panel.

The reform had wide political support. But the Supreme Court Advocates-on-Record Association and others argued that it put the executive inside the room where judges are chosen, with a power to block appointments, and that this threatened the very independence the courts exist to protect. The case asked whether the method of appointing judges is itself part of the Constitution's basic structure.

This is an editorial account written for readers who admire good advocacy. It is not legal advice.

02How it was argued

The challenge was led by Fali S. Nariman, one of the most respected advocates in the country, appearing for the Advocates-on-Record Association. His argument was that an independent judiciary, and in particular a judiciary with the decisive voice in choosing its own members, is part of the basic structure of the Constitution. Give the executive a seat and a veto in that process, and you weaken the independence that judicial review depends on.

The Union argued the opposite with real force. The collegium was unaccountable, it said, and the NJAC made appointments more transparent while still keeping judges in the majority. A reform passed by Parliament and ratified by the states, with such broad support, deserved respect. Courts, it urged, should not strike down a considered constitutional amendment simply because they preferred the old way.

This was advocacy at its most delicate, because the Court was being asked to defend its own role. The petitioners had to show that they were protecting a principle, not a privilege.

03What the court held

By a majority of four to one, the Court struck down both the 99th Amendment and the NJAC Act. It held that the primacy of the judiciary in appointing judges is part of the independence of the judiciary, which is part of the basic structure, and that the new commission, with the Law Minister and two lay members able to affect appointments, diluted that primacy unacceptably. The collegium system was revived.

One judge dissented, warning that the collegium had real faults and that the majority was protecting an imperfect system. The majority itself acknowledged the collegium's weaknesses and invited steps to improve its transparency.

The Court was asked to hand a share of its independence to the government, and it declined. Few benches are asked to decide a question so close to themselves.

It was a striking result: a near-unanimous Parliament outvoted by a careful reading of what the Constitution will and will not allow to be changed.

04Why it still matters

The judgment settled, at least for now, that how India chooses its judges is not an ordinary policy matter but a constitutional one, bound up with the basic structure. It is the reason the collegium still stands, and the reason every future proposal to reform judicial appointments must reckon with the independence of the judiciary as a limit, not just a value.

It is also a reminder of what advocacy can be at its highest. The petitioners won not by appealing to the Court's self-interest but by making a principled case that the Court could own without embarrassment. That is a hard needle to thread, and it was threaded by lawyers who had spent lifetimes before these benches.

Advocacy that defends the foundations of the system is exactly what a publication like Well Argued exists to put on record.

05Related landmark wins

The same year and the same instinct, to guard constitutional guarantees, run through other stories in the Well Argued series:

• the Shreya Singhal case, which struck down a law that chilled free speech online.
• the voter's right to know case, on transparency in public life.

06About Well Argued

Well Argued is a free, curated publication by Claw that gives an advocate a hard-won court victory an audience, turning a winning judgement into a short, well-told story that Claw shares across its social channels, its website and the AI answer engines. A ruling that protected the independence of the judiciary began as an argument the bar itself carried to court, and principled arguments like it are made across India every week, most of them never seen beyond the file. Wins like this are what Well Argued exists to tell.

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