For the fourth time, the Supreme Court has rewritten the rules governing entry into the subordinate judiciary. In a significant 2:1 judgment delivered recently, a bench headed by Chief Justice of India (CJI) Surya Kant retained the principle that prospective Civil Judges (Junior Division) should have some exposure to the working of courts, while rejecting the proposition that three years of conventional Bar practice must necessarily precede the judicial examination.
The result is a compromise between two competing philosophies of judicial recruitment: should judges enter the system young and be trained institutionally, or should they first acquire experience as practising lawyers before moving to the bench?
The majority judgment, authored by CJI Surya Kant for himself and Justice Augustine George Masih, chose the middle path. Justice K Vinod Chandran dissented.
WHAT HAS THE COURT ORDERED?
For recruitment notifications issued up to March 31, 2027, all law graduates will remain eligible to apply, notwithstanding the three-year practice condition restored by the Court in May 2025.
Those selected, however, will not immediately function as independent judicial officers. They will first be appointed as Trainee Judicial Officers and must undergo one year of intensive training at the concerned State Judicial Academy, followed by one year of structured law clerkship.
The clerkship itself will be divided into two six-month periods: the first under the Principal District Judge/District and Sessions Judge or a member of the Higher Judicial Service, and the second under a sitting High Court judge.
The two years of training and clerkship will together be treated as equivalent to two years of Bar practice for purposes of the eligibility framework.
At the end of this process, trainees will be evaluated on judicial temperament, legal reasoning, procedural understanding, diligence, conduct and overall suitability for judicial office. Only those who satisfactorily complete the assessment will enter the regular judicial service.
During institutional training, trainees will receive half the remuneration payable to a First Class Judicial Magistrate, along with applicable facilities and benefits.
From April 1, 2027, however, the regime becomes more demanding. Candidates will have to complete one year of actual practice in the district courts before appearing for the civil judge examination. That practice will have to be certified through a mechanism prescribed by the High Courts.
After selection, candidates will still be required to undergo one year of judicial academy training and one year of structured clerkship.
The Court has also deliberately made the arrangement provisional. It will operate for five years, after which empirical material relating to recruitment quality, training, clerkship and the performance of judicial officers is to be placed before the Court for possible reconsideration.
WHY WAS THE THREE-YEAR REQUIREMENT INTRODUCED?
The answer lies in the long-running All India Judges Association vs Union of India litigation, originally initiated in 1989 as Writ Petition (Civil) No. 1022 of 1989. Over the years, the case has become something of a constitutional laboratory for reform of India’s subordinate judiciary.
In its 1993 judgment, the Supreme Court endorsed the requirement of three years’ standing at the Bar for entry-level judicial service.
The rationale was straightforward. From the first day in office, a judge deals with questions affecting liberty, property, reputation and personal rights. Mere bookish knowledge of law, the Court reasoned, could not substitute for familiarity with courtroom functioning, procedure, lawyers, judges and the wider administration of justice.
HOW THE COURT SUBSEQUENTLY CHANGED ITS MIND
The Court’s next major shift followed the recommendations of the First National Judicial Pay Commission, popularly known as the Shetty Commission. Established in March 1996 under the chairmanship of former Supreme Court judge Justice K Jagannatha Shetty, the Commission was tasked with reviewing and recommending improvements to the pay scales, pensions and service conditions of judicial officers and subordinate court staff across India.
In its 2002 judgment, the Supreme Court concluded that the three-year requirement had produced an unintended consequence: it discouraged bright young law graduates from joining the judicial service.
A graduate who had to spend three years at the Bar before becoming eligible could find a judicial career less attractive by the time eligibility arrived.
The Court, therefore, directed High Courts and state governments to amend their rules to allow even fresh law graduates to compete for judicial service. At the same time, it recommended at least one year—and preferably two years—of training after recruitment.
This historical point is often lost in the current debate.
The recruitment rules adopted in several states in the mid-2000s were not simply administrative experiments undertaken in isolation. They flowed from the Supreme Court’s 2002 decision, which had accepted the Shetty Commission’s reasoning. The underlying idea was to substitute institutional training for prior Bar experience.
THE 2025 REVERSAL
For roughly two decades, fresh law graduates could enter the lower judiciary without prior Bar practice. The Supreme Court revisited that experiment in May 2025 and restored the three-year practice requirement.
The 2025 bench concluded that the experience of inducting fresh graduates without practical exposure had not proved satisfactory. It emphasised that a civil judge must understand the realities of litigation and courtroom administration, and that neither law books nor pre-service training could completely substitute for exposure to the functioning of courts.
The Court also permitted experience as a law clerk to count towards the practice requirement.
The decision effectively overturned the 2002 position and restored the three-year threshold.
But that restoration created a serious problem for a generation of law graduates who had planned their careers around rules that had operated for more than two decades. Some had graduated specifically to prepare for judicial examinations without spending three years at the Bar.
The sudden change potentially disqualified candidates who had acted entirely within the existing legal framework.
A MORE SOPHISTICATED ANSWER—OR JUDICIAL OVERREACH?
The weakness of the three-year rule was always that duration does not necessarily equal experience.
The latest model attempts to address that problem by combining different forms of exposure: one year of actual practice, followed by two years of structured judicial training and clerkship. In theory, this could produce a better-prepared judge than three years of largely unstructured Bar practice.
But the judgment also raises uncomfortable institutional questions.
The first concerns implementation. Judicial academies and High Courts will now have to create intensive, uniform and objectively measurable training programmes. The quality of judicial training varies considerably across states. A two-year training architecture will be useful only if it amounts to substantially more than classroom lectures, routine assignments and ceremonial court visits.
Second, the Court has effectively created a new probationary layer in judicial recruitment. Success in a competitive examination will no longer necessarily mean immediate entry into regular judicial service. Performance during training and clerkship will also matter.
That makes the quality, transparency and consistency of evaluation critical.
Third, the judgment leaves unresolved a deeper question: what exactly is the empirical basis for concluding that fresh graduates make poorer judges?
The 2025 judgment relied heavily on institutional experience and the views of High Courts. Critics had pointed out that there was limited systematic data comparing judges recruited directly from law school with those who entered the judiciary after practising at the Bar.
If empirical evidence is the justification for changing the rules, the judicial system must now collect that evidence.
THE LARGER CONSTITUTIONAL LESSON
The Supreme Court’s four-stage journey—from mandatory practice, to fresh-graduate entry, back to three years of practice, and now to a hybrid model—reveals something larger about judicial administration.
There is no magic number of years at the Bar that automatically produces a competent judge. Nor can judicial academies manufacture judicial temperament overnight.
The real question is whether the recruitment system can identify candidates with legal ability, integrity and judicial aptitude and then give them sustained exposure to the realities of adjudication.
The latest judgment should, therefore, be viewed neither simply as a retreat from the 2025 decision nor as another relaxation for judicial aspirants.
It is, rather, an experiment in combining experience with institutional preparation.
Whether that experiment succeeds will depend less on the Supreme Court’s formula than on its execution by High Courts, state governments and judicial academies.
The ultimate test should not be whether a candidate has spent one year or three years at the Bar. It should be whether the system can demonstrate, through evidence, that the judges it produces are better equipped to administer justice.
That is the real measure of judicial reform—and the one that should determine the Court’s next revision of the rules.
—The writer is a New Delhi-based journalist, lawyer and trained mediator
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