The constitution of a Standing Committee on Judicial Well-being by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant, under the chairmanship of Justice KV Viswanathan, on World Mental Health Day, 10 October 2026, has brought attention to a subject that deserves both serious consideration and an occasional sense of humour.
The initiative, informed by research undertaken by the Supreme Court’s Centre for Research and Planning, acknowledges that the mental and physical well-being of judicial officers is inseparable from the effective administration of justice.
The development is welcome. After all, an institution entrusted with examining the conduct of practically everybody else has now turned its attention to the working conditions of those who preside over it.
The cause list has no conscience
A judicial officer may begin the morning with a carefully arranged cause list and the reasonable expectation of an orderly working day. By noon, the schedule may have acquired the unpredictability of a constitutional crisis.
One advocate seeks five minutes to obtain instructions. Another requires an adjournment because the first advocate has not obtained instructions. A third announces that the matter is ready, subject to the production of a document that has not yet been found. The fourth assures the court that the dispute is capable of settlement, provided the parties are given sufficient time to disagree about the terms.
The judge looks at the clock. The clock, displaying admirable professional neutrality, continues to move.
A cause list is perhaps the only document that can become progressively longer in the mind even when no additional matter has been added to it. The judicial officer must listen, decide, dictate orders and accommodate genuine difficulties, all while maintaining the impression that time remains a manageable legal concept.
Perhaps every cause list should carry a disclaimer: The contents of this document may cause unexpected administrative and philosophical distress.
Candour and the art of listening
Not all courtroom encounters are exhausting. Some advocates provide the welcome relief of professional candour.
An advocate who acknowledges an inconvenient fact, identifies an adverse judgment and explains why the case nevertheless remains legally sustainable can save the court considerable time. The admission may weaken one submission while strengthening the advocate’s credibility.
Another advocate may attempt to conceal an obvious difficulty beneath several pages of explanation, hoping that the court will overlook the problem out of sheer fatigue.
The law requires something more demanding than a favourable impression: a reasoned decision based upon the record and the applicable principles.
Thus, the judge must distinguish between finding an advocate persuasive and finding the advocate’s case legally sustainable.
When the judgment follows the judge home
The courtroom may close, but the judicial mind does not necessarily receive the same administrative instruction.
A difficult question of law may remain unresolved. A judgment may require another authority to be examined. A factual inconsistency may demand reconsideration. One precedent leads to another, and the second contains an exception that requires the first to be read again.
The draft is revised. A paragraph is deleted, restored and then rewritten. A footnote is introduced to explain an exception, only for the footnote to require an explanation of its own.
At some point, the judge may reasonably wonder whether the judgment is being written or whether the entire history of jurisprudence is negotiating its terms.
The file has been adjourned until tomorrow; the mind, unfortunately, has not received the order.
The missing stapler and other constitutional mysteries
The difficulties do not end with adjudication. Judicial officers may also confront inadequate staffing, infrastructural limitations, transfers, administrative responsibilities and the practical business of keeping courts functioning.
A file is reported to have been dispatched. The receiving office cannot locate it. The sending office produces a dispatch entry. The entry is acknowledged, but the file remains missing. The matter may eventually require more administrative attention than the dispute for which the file was originally created.
Somewhere in this institutional maze, a printer stops working and a stapler disappears.
It is therefore possible that, in certain circumstances, the most effective judicial wellness intervention would be neither meditation nor motivational literature, but sufficient staff, a functioning printer and a file that arrives before the matter is called.
The international case for judicial well-being
The problem is not confined to India. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, through its Global Judicial Integrity Network, has highlighted occupational stress, inadequate time for self-care and insufficient institutional support in its international work on judicial well-being. The Nauru Declaration on Judicial Well-being, adopted on 25 July 2024, likewise recognises the need for systematic, evidence-based measures to safeguard judicial health.
The Supreme Court’s new initiative reflects this wider recognition. Its significance lies in treating well-being as an institutional responsibility rather than a private weakness.
The final order
Perhaps the Judicial Well-being Committee will eventually recommend better staffing, manageable workloads, professional support and working arrangements that permit genuine recovery. Such measures would benefit not only judicial officers but also lawyers, litigants and the administration of justice.
After all, no litigant enters a courtroom hoping to encounter an exhausted judge. No advocate wishes to argue before a Bench whose attention has been consumed by an impossible schedule. And no institution should require extraordinary psychological endurance merely to sustain an ordinary working day.
