APPREHENSIONS OF JUDICIAL ACTIVISM‌

The same jurist Upendra Baxi also presented a typology of fears which are generated by judicial activism. He observes: "The facts entail invocation of a wide range of fears. The invocation is designed to bring into a nervous rationality among India’s most conscientious justices”. He described the following types of fears7

:

1. Ideological fears: (Are they usurping powers of the legislature, the executive or of other autonomous institutions in a civil society?)

2. Epistemic fears: (Do they have enough knowledge in economic matters of a Manmohan Singh, in scientific matters of the Czars of the atomic energy establishment, the captains of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, and so on?)

3. Management fears: (Are they doing justice by adding this kind of litigation work load to a situation of staggering growth of arrears?)

4. Legitimation fears: (Are not they causing depletion of their symbolic and instrumental authority by passing orders in public interest litigation which the executive may bypass or ignore? Would not the people’s faith in judiciary, a democratic recourse, be thus eroded?)

5. Democratic fears: (Is a profusion of public interest litigation nurturing democracy or depleting its potential for the future?)

6. Biographic fears: (What would be my place in national affairs after superannuation if I overdo this kind of litigation?)