Should the judiciary be more restrained in overturning laws passed by Parliament?

Judicial review is the power of India's courts, ultimately the Supreme Court, to strike down laws and even constitutional amendments that they find violate the Constitution. India's courts have used this power more assertively than many democracies, including against amendments passed by large parliamentary majorities. The debate is whether this is a necessary check that protects constitutional rights from majoritarian overreach, or an unelected institution overriding decisions made by elected representatives.

The foundational case is Kesavananda Bharati v. State of Kerala (1973), in which a 13-judge bench ruled that Parliament's power to amend the Constitution under Article 368 does not extend to altering its 'basic structure', establishing that judicial review applies even to constitutional amendments themselves, not just ordinary laws.

The most contested recent application was the 2015 National Judicial Appointments Commission (NJAC) case, where the Supreme Court struck down the 99th Constitutional Amendment, a law that had passed Parliament with near-unanimous support and been ratified by a majority of state legislatures, ruling that the new judicial appointments system it created violated judicial independence as part of the Constitution's basic structure. Critics, including senior political figures, called the verdict an example of judicial overreach against a measure with overwhelming democratic backing.

• Striking down a near-unanimous constitutional amendment, as in the NJAC case, raises a real democratic legitimacy question: unelected judges overriding a measure passed by elected representatives across party lines.
• Excessive judicial intervention in policy and legislative matters can substitute judicial preference for democratic deliberation on questions the Constitution leaves to Parliament.
• Predictable deference to the legislature on most matters, reserving intervention for clear constitutional violations, gives elected governments room to govern and be held accountable by voters rather than courts.

• Without basic structure review, a parliamentary majority could in principle amend away core constitutional protections (free elections, judicial independence, fundamental rights) entirely through ordinary legislative process.
• Judicial independence is itself a structural safeguard; allowing the executive to control judicial appointments, as the NJAC would have, creates a conflict of interest the court argued it was constitutionally required to prevent.
• Courts in India have historically protected rights (such as in the Shah Bano case on maintenance, or the 2018 decriminalisation of Section 377) against majoritarian political pressure that the legislature was slow to address.

The United States Supreme Court has long exercised strong judicial review without an explicit basic structure doctrine, while the United Kingdom, with no codified constitution, operates instead on parliamentary sovereignty, where courts generally cannot strike down Acts of Parliament at all. India's basic structure doctrine is closer to Germany's approach, where the Federal Constitutional Court can strike down constitutional amendments that violate core principles like human dignity, placing India among the more judicially assertive constitutional democracies rather than the more restrained, parliament-deferential ones.

Criticism of judicial overreach has come most consistently from the government and ruling party of the day, regardless of which party that is, since it is whoever holds power whose legislation is most likely to be reviewed. Civil liberties groups and much of the legal community have generally defended strong judicial review as a check on executive and legislative power. The debate resurfaced prominently when the Vice President raised public questions about the basic structure doctrine's legitimacy in 2025.

This question sits mainly on the Authority axis: support for strong judicial review reads as favouring institutional checks on concentrated power, while support for parliamentary sovereignty reads as favouring elected-majority authority with fewer institutional constraints.