Equal Access to Law Is the First Step to True Equality: CJI Surya Kant's Historic Address at St Petersburg Legal Forum

EduLaw EditorialLegal Updates2026-06-26

When the Chief Justice of India the presiding head of a judiciary serving nearly 1.4 billion people rises to address an international legal forum and declares that "the first step to equality is providing equal access to the law," it is not mere rhetoric. It is a statement forged from the daily reality of adjudicating disputes across a nation of staggering geographical, economic, linguistic, and cultural diversity. On 25 June 2026, Chief Justice of India Surya Kant delivered precisely such a declaration at the XIV St Petersburg International Legal Forum in Russia, speaking on the theme "Equal Justice, Equal Law: Access as the Measure of International Law's Humanity." His address traversed ancient Indian jurisprudential thought, Indian constitutional guarantees, the expansion of access to justice through judicial innovation, and the inequities embedded within the international legal order. This case analysis unpacks the legal substance behind CJI Kant's address, grounding his observations in the constitutional text, statutory framework, and landmark judicial precedents that collectively form India's evolving architecture of equal access to justice. The Core Proposition: Access to Justice as the Grammar of Legality The central thesis advanced by CJI Surya Kant is deceptively simple yet profoundly consequential — that equal access to the law is not an ancillary benefit of a legal system but its foundational precondition. In his words, "Such access cannot merely be a procedural nicety and must fructify in the conferment of actual rights rather than hollow statutory declarations." The CJI drew a vivid metaphorical parallel between Falconet's Bronze Horseman statue in St Petersburg — resting upon the Thunder Stone, the largest stone ever moved in human history — and the international legal order resting upon the foundation of equality. Just as the monument required a foundation worthy of what it would carry, legal systems require the bedrock of equal access to sustain their legitimacy. CJI Kant went further, asserting that "law without equality is merely the organized will of the stronger party." This framing elevates access to justice from a procedural convenience to a substantive constitutional right — a position that Indian courts have progressively embraced over several decades of transformative jurisprudence. Constitutional Foundation: Articles 14, 21, and 39A as the Structural Pillars The Indian Constitution provides a robust textual foundation for the right to equal access to justice. Article 14 guarantees equality before the law and equal protection of the laws within the territory of India. This is not merely a prohibition against discrimination; it is an affirmative mandate requiring the State to ensure that the legal system itself does not become a site of inequality. Article 21 , which guarantees the right to life and personal liberty, has been expansively interpreted by the Supreme Court to encompass access to justice as a facet of the right to life. The reasoning is straightforward — a right without a remedy is illusory, and the ability to approach a court of law is the precondition for the enforcement of every other fundamental right. Article 39A , introduced by the Constitution (42nd Amendment) Act, 1976, directs the State to secure that the operation of the legal system promotes justice on a basis of equal opportunity and to provide free legal aid to ensure that opportunities for securing justice are not denied to any citizen by reason of economic or other disabilities. Together, these provisions constitute what CJI Kant described as the Indian Constitution's promise of "a new dawn" — a commitment to equality before the law, life with dignity, and equal justice that must be delivered across every fault line of Indian society. Judicial Evolution: From Hussainara Khatoon to Anita Kushwaha The constitutional text receives its fullest meaning through judicial interpretation, and Indian courts have progressively expanded the contours of the right to access justice through landmark pronouncements. In Hussainara Khatoon v. Home Secretary, State of Bihar (1979) 3 SCC 108 , the Supreme Court, confronted with the spectacle of thousands of undertrial prisoners languishing in Bihar's jails for periods exceeding the maximum sentences for their alleged offences, held that the right to free legal aid is an essential ingredient of reasonable, fair, and just procedure under Article 21. Justice P.N. Bhagwati declared that the State cannot avoid its constitutional obligation to provide free legal aid to those who cannot afford legal representation. This decision fundamentally recast legal aid from a discretionary act of State charity into an enforceable constitutional right. The trajectory continued through S.P. Gupta v. Union of India AIR 1982 SC 149 , where the Supreme Court expanded the concept of locus standi, holding that any member of the public acting bona fide and having sufficient interest can approach the court for redressal of grievances of those who are unable to approach the court themselves. This decision democratized access to the highest court by dismantling the traditional requirement that only an aggrieved party could file a petition. Most significantly for the present discussion, in Anita Kushwaha v. Pushap Sudan AIR 2016 SC 3506 , the Supreme Court declared unequivocally that access to justice is a fundamental right implicit in Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution. The Court observed that access to justice encompasses the right to be heard by an impartial adjudicator, the right to a reasoned decision, and the right to have effective access to the adjudicatory mechanism itself. This trilogy of decisions — spanning nearly four decades — reflects the progressive judicial realization of precisely the principle CJI Kant articulated at St Petersburg: that access to justice is not a technical convenience but a non-discriminatory founding principle of governance. The Indian Innovation: PILs, Legal Aid, and Procedure as the Servant of Justice CJI Kant specifically referenced three innovations through which Indian constitutional courts have attempted to eliminate barriers to access — Public Interest Litigation (PIL), free legal aid, and the relaxation of procedural requirements. The PIL jurisdiction, first articulated in decisions like S.P. Gupta v. Union of India and Bandhua Mukti Morcha v. Union of India (1984) 3 SCC 161 , permitted any public-spirited citizen to approach the court on behalf of those unable to do so themselves. A letter addressed to the court could be treated as a writ petition. This innovation was born from the recognition that India's most vulnerable populations — bonded labourers, undertrial prisoners, displaced communities — often lacked the awareness, resources, or capacity to approach courts independently. The Legal Services Authorities Act, 1987 , gave statutory shape to the constitutional promise of Article 39A by establishing a nationwide network of legal services authorities at the national, state, district, and taluk levels. Section 12 of this Act identifies the categories of persons entitled to free legal services, including members of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, women, children, persons with disabilities, industrial workmen, persons in custody, victims of trafficking, and persons whose annual income falls below the prescribed threshold. Beyond specific institutional mechanisms, CJI Kant highlighted the broader judicial philosophy of "treating procedure as a servant of justice, not its master." This principle finds expression across Indian jurisprudence — from the relaxation of limitation periods in the interest of justice, to the exercise of inherent powers under Section 151 of the Code of Civil Procedure and Section 482 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (now Section 528 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023) , to the expansive interpretation of fundamental rights that has characterized Indian constitutional adjudication since the 1970s. The Digital Dimension: Technology as an Equalizer CJI Surya Kant's access-to-justice framework extends beyond physical courtrooms into the digital sphere. At his earlier address at the Oxford Union on 11 June 2026, the CJI elaborated that "fundamental rights must protect citizens with equal ferocity in both the physical and digital worlds." He highlighted several technological initiatives undertaken by the Indian judiciary — virtual hearings that eliminate geographical barriers, electronic filing systems that reduce costs and delays, live-streaming of court proceedings that enhance transparency, the Supreme Court Vidhik Anuvaad Software (SUVAS) that translates judicial decisions into regional languages, and the Su Sahay AI-powered virtual assistant that provides procedural guidance to litigants. These initiatives represent a deliberate effort to bridge what CJI Kant identified as the most significant obstacles to equality — geographical, social, and economic disparities. When a litigant in a remote village in Arunachal Pradesh or Rajasthan can access court proceedings, file documents, and obtain translated judgments without travelling hundreds of kilometres to a distant court, the constitutional promise of equal access moves closer to fulfilment. However, the CJI simultaneously cautioned against "digital exclusion" — the risk that technological solutions may inadvertently create new barriers for those lacking digital literacy or internet connectivity. The constitutional promise, he emphasized, remains unfulfilled if a citizen cannot navigate a virtual court. The International Dimension: Equality Among Nations A distinctive feature of CJI Kant's St Petersburg address was his extension of the access-to-justice framework from the domestic to the international plane. He observed that principles of international law such as jus cogens , erga omnes obligations, and pacta sunt servanda are "guardrails against international discretion" and "too fundamental to be traded away." Yet he noted a troubling asymmetry: nations in the Global East and South — many still constructing institutions, addressing colonial legacies, and confronting poverty on a scale the original drafters of international covenants could not have envisioned — "frequently endure scrutiny and pressure that are not proportionally applied to wealthier and more influential States, whose own compliance records are not necessarily irreproachable." This observation carries particular weight coming from the head of the judiciary of the world's most populous nation. It situates India's domestic experience of expanding access to justice within a broader argument about the structure of international law itself. If equal access to law is the first step to equality domestically, then sovereign equality and equitable application of international norms must be the first step to a legitimate international legal order. The CJI's reference to Kautilya's Arthashastra — asserting that equality's roots are traceable to the 4th century Indian subcontinent rather than exclusively to the Magna Carta of 1215 — serves a dual purpose. It challenges the Eurocentric genealogy of legal rights while affirming that the principle of equality before law has deep civilizational roots across multiple traditions, including Roman lex regia , Islamic shari'a , and African Ubuntu . Practical Implications and Continuing Challenges CJI Surya Kant's address is not merely aspirational; it carries concrete implications for the ongoing administration of justice in India and for the development of international legal norms. Domestically, the emphasis on substantive rather than formal equality demands continued investment in legal aid infrastructure, judicial appointments to improve judge-to-population ratios, language accessibility, physical and digital court infrastructure in underserved areas, and sensitivity to the intersecting disadvantages faced by marginalized communities. The National Legal Services Authority (NALSA) reported that India's legal services institutions handled over 1.5 crore (15 million) beneficiaries through various legal aid programmes in recent years, yet the gap between entitlement and actual delivery remains significant. India's judge-to-population ratio — approximately 21 judges per million people — remains among the lowest globally, creating structural delays that disproportionately affect the poor and vulnerable. CJI Kant's assertion that "equal justice and equal law are not ceremonial phrases but the conditions under which a legal order may credibly call itself law at all" implicitly challenges all stakeholders — the legislature, the executive, the Bar, and the Bench — to treat access to justice not as a policy aspiration but as a constitutional imperative demanding continuous, measurable action. Conclusion: The Foundation Must Hold CJI Surya Kant's plenary address at St Petersburg represents a significant articulation of India's judicial philosophy on the world stage. By framing equal access to justice as the foundational precondition — not the aspirational endpoint — of any legitimate legal order, he draws a direct line from Article 14 and Article 21 of the Indian Constitution through decades of transformative Supreme Court jurisprudence to the present challenges of digital justice and global legal equity. His closing metaphor is instructive: just as the Bronze Horseman endures because it rests upon a foundation worthy of what it carries, the entire edifice of law — domestic and international — can sustain itself only if the foundation of equality holds. "It is the work of every jurist, and every institution they serve, to ensure that the foundation holds," CJI Kant concluded. For legal practitioners, academics, policymakers, and citizens, this articulation serves as both a reminder of how far Indian jurisprudence has travelled — from the undertrial prisoners of Hussainara Khatoon to AI-powered multilingual access in 2026 — and a challenge to ensure the journey continues until equal access to justice becomes a lived reality for every person within and between nations. The address reinforces that in India's constitutional vision, justice is not a privilege dispensed by the powerful to the deserving. It is, as CJI Kant declared, "the grammar of legality itself." Key Provisions Referenced: Article 14 — Equality before law and equal protection of the laws Article 21 — Right to life and personal liberty Article 39A — Equal justice and free legal aid Section 12, Legal Services Authorities Act, 1987 — Categories of persons entitled to free legal services Section 482 CrPC / Section 528 BNSS, 2023 — Inherent powers of the High Court Key Case Laws Referenced: Hussainara Khatoon v. Home Secretary, State of Bihar (1979) 3 SCC 108 — Right to free legal aid as part of Article 21 S.P. Gupta v. Union of India AIR 1982 SC 149 — Expansion of locus standi and Public Interest Litigation Bandhua Mukti Morcha v. Union of India (1984) 3 SCC 161 — PIL for bonded labourers; epistolary jurisdiction Anita Kushwaha v. Pushap Sudan AIR 2016 SC 3506 — Access to justice declared a fundamental right under Articles 14 and 21