SC Brings Back 3-Year Bar Requirement: A Blow to Inclusion?

On a humid summer morning in June 2025, a crowd of young law graduates gathered outside a modest coaching center in Bhopal, clutching their well‐worn notes and hopeful gazes. For two decades, these aspirants had believed that, upon earning their degrees, they could stride directly into courtroom benches—fresh voices in a judiciary long seen as insulated and arcane. Yet, that day, their aspirations collided with a different reality: the Supreme Court’s May 20 ruling in All India Judges’ Assn. v. Union of India had reinstated a mandatory three‐year practice requirement for civil judge eligibility, undoing the 2002 reform that once opened the lower bench to fresh graduates. 

Behind the solemn facades of the High Courts, seasoned jurists offered a singular refrain: “Maturity, temperament, courtroom grit—these can only be honed over the years as an advocate.” But beyond the marbled halls, critics whispered of unintended casualties: young women compelled to postpone judicial dreams in a society still bound by marriage timetables; first‐generation lawyers without family funds to survive the lean early years of litigation; and marginalized communities for whom the courtroom had once been a rare gateway to social mobility. 

This editorial traces the layered contours of that pivotal decision. It asks: Does the altar of experience demand such steep sacrifices that it eclipses equal access? Or is the quest for a more seasoned Bench worth the price in diversity and youthful ambition? In unpacking the legal precedents and human stakes of this reversal, we confront a larger question: how do we calibrate a judiciary that is both competent and truly reflective of India’s rich tapestry? 

The Court’s 2025 ruling—delivered by Chief Justice B.R. Gavai and Justices Augustine George Masih and K. Vinod Chandran—reads not merely as a procedural update but as a philosophical declaration. It places faith in experience as the crucible of judicial capacity. Courtroom exposure, the bench argued, fosters “temperament, procedural familiarity, and stakeholder sensitivity”—qualities that academic brilliance alone cannot supply. In its view, the robe of a judge must be earned not just by examination but by endurance in the trenches of litigation. 

At first glance, the logic is unimpeachable. Few would dispute that the daily rhythm of courts—with their shifting procedures, unpredictable dockets, and emotionally fraught cases—teaches lessons that textbooks cannot. The Supreme Court did not arrive at its decision in isolation: High Courts across Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Manipur, and Uttarakhand had already raised red flags. Their affidavits recounted anecdotes of junior judges—brilliant on paper—struggling to manage courtrooms, engage litigants, or exercise discretion. 

But the ruling was not a clean legalistic correction. It marked a striking reversal of the Court’s own 2002 decision, which had removed the very same practice requirement in a bid to modernize recruitment and democratize the Bench. That earlier reform, rooted in the Shetty Commission’s recommendations, viewed judicial service not as the final station of an aged barrister, but as an early career pathway for bright, public-minded graduates. If post-recruitment training was intensive and rigorous, why, the 2002 Court had reasoned, should experience be a gatekeeper? 

In rolling back that logic, the 2025 decision offered no empirical audit of how the “direct entry” system had performed in its two-decade experiment. No quantitative evaluation of judgment quality, case disposal rates, or training efficacy. No serious inquiry into whether inexperience was a problem of hiring or post-hiring support. The Court leaned heavily on qualitative feedback: the mood among High Court administrators, the frustrations of managing raw recruits, the collective yearning for maturity over malleability. 

Yet policymaking by intuition is policymaking nonetheless. The result, now encoded in law, tilts the scale toward a narrower idea of readiness—one defined by elapsed time in court, not necessarily by proven capacity to judge. 

The ruling does not merely revive the three-year threshold—it attempts to ensure that time translates into substance. To counter the phenomenon of “paper practice” (where aspirants enroll with the Bar but rarely appear in court), the Court introduced a certification regime. Candidates must now obtain attestations from senior advocates and judicial officers, vouching for their active engagement. 

But in India’s fragmented and largely informal legal profession, the line between active practice and shadow apprenticeship is blurry at best. Many young lawyers spend their early years stapling files, waiting in corridors, or working unpaid under senior counsels with little real exposure to advocacy. A certificate may affirm presence, but not proficiency. And given the inherent power asymmetries between juniors and seniors, it may affirm loyalty more than learning. 

This creates a dangerous paradox: a rule intended to improve judicial quality may, in practice, reward proximity and privilege more than performance. Those with family backgrounds in law, or the means to sustain years of low-paid work, are more likely to survive this crucible. Those without, particularly first-generation lawyers from rural or marginalized communities, risk being filtered out before the race even begins. 

The Court’s intention may have been noble. But the certification mechanism, without structural reform in legal apprenticeship—stipends, mentorship, and transparency—may become a bureaucratic hoop rather than a meaningful filter. Worse, it may entrench gatekeeping under the veneer of procedural propriety. 

Perhaps the most devastating—and least acknowledged—impact of the new rule will fall along lines of gender. 

Consider the average Indian woman law graduate. She finishes her degree at 23 or 24. With the reinstated requirement, she becomes eligible for judicial exams only at 26 or 27—an age band that, in many parts of India, collides directly with familial pressures to marry, have children, and retreat from the public sphere. For countless women from non-metropolitan backgrounds, the judiciary wasn’t just a job—it was a strategy for deferring marriage, for bargaining independence, for rewriting their social destinies. 

In cities like Patna or Jabalpur, law coaching centers have long been filled with young women who viewed the robe not as prestige alone, but as a ticket to autonomy. A judge’s salary meant financial independence. A government post meant leverage in a patriarchal household. A black coat in a courtroom meant protection in spaces where women are often unsafe. The 2025 ruling delays—and for many, denies—that trajectory. 

And litigation, the supposed proving ground, is far from gender-neutral. Women in early practice routinely report harassment, pay gaps, and exclusion from serious matters. Many are relegated to chamber work while male juniors argue cases. In small-town courts, physical safety and professional respect are far from guaranteed. 

To require three years of practice as a prerequisite, without remedying these systemic disadvantages, is to ask women to climb a mountain while others start at the summit. The Court may not have intended to penalize them. But policies need not be malicious to be exclusionary. Discrimination often wears the face of neutrality. 

Is three years of practice truly the crucible of judicial wisdom? 

The Supreme Court’s rationale assumes so. But decades of scholarship—within India and beyond—suggest that experience is only one piece of the judicial competence puzzle. The 117th Law Commission Report noted as early as 1986 that bar experience alone does not prepare one to be a judge. It pointed to training, mentorship, and institutional scaffolding as more reliable predictors of courtroom excellence. 

Indeed, many young judges appointed under the 2002 system performed admirably, aided by evolving judicial academies and pre-service training modules. Yet their performance data was never systematically studied. The 2025 ruling, therefore, arrives not on the back of hard evidence, butt on a tide of anecdotal frustration, a nostalgia for maturity, and perhaps, a discomfort with youth. 

It is not enough to argue that practice makes perfect. The legal profession in India, especially at the entry level, often mirrors a sink-or-swim model—more survivalist than pedagogical. Without paid apprenticeships, without structured learning, without incentives for seniors to mentor, the first three years can just as easily breed cynicism as competence. 

In that light, a time-based requirement, divorced from the quality of experience, risks becoming a checkbox. It may exclude those who would make excellent judges. And it may admit those who did little in three years but wait out the clock. 

The constitutional mechanics of the Court’s directive also raise critical questions. 

Judicial appointments at the subordinate level fall under Article 234 of the Constitution. This Article envisages a collaborative architecture—State Governments, Public Service Commissions, and High Courts working in tandem to frame recruitment rules. The 2025 ruling, in mandating all High Courts to change their rules within three months and directing State Governments to comply thereafter, appears to stretch judicial authority into administrative territory. 

Critics have called this “judicial overreach”—a phrase often hurled loosely, but in this context, not without merit. The Supreme Court has every right to interpret constitutional values. But when it directs state-level recruitment norms without a broader legislative or consultative process, it blurs the lines between adjudication and policymaking. 

Moreover, not all states were convinced that the 2002 model had failed. Some, like Rajasthan and Sikkim, supported fresh graduate entry. By imposing uniformity from the top, the ruling leaves little room for state-specific experimentation, despite India’s vast social, economic, and infrastructural diversity. 

This centralization, while well-meaning, risks reinforcing a judicial culture that privileges insulation over inclusion, command over consultation. 

The Supreme Court’s 2025 ruling on judicial eligibility is not merely a return to an older rule—it is a reflection of India’s enduring struggle to define the soul of its judiciary. Is it a cloistered fraternity of the tried and tested, shaped by years at the bar? Or is it a public institution that must grow porous enough to let in those who carry promise, idealism, and a deeper stake in India’s pluralism? 

By reinstating the three-year practice requirement, the Court affirms its faith in experience, but it does so at the cost of equity. It answers one question (“Can bookish brilliance substitute for courtroom temper?”) but leaves another unasked (“Can we afford to shut out those who cannot pay the price of entry?”). In doing so, it narrows the aperture through which thousands saw a vision of public service. 

This is not to deny the merits of the Court’s concern. Practical exposure matters. Maturity matters. But if the goal is to produce better judges—not merely older ones—then reforms must address the structure of early legal practice itself: its precarities, its exclusions, its caste and gender biases. To place a barrier without fixing the road is not reform; it is quite a disqualification. 

The judgment also leaves behind a deeper disquiet: a judiciary that enacts sweeping recruitment policy without robust data, without systematic evaluation of the last two decades, and democratic consultation with those most affected. In its attempt to standardize, it homogenizes. In its pursuit of quality, it risks extinguishing diversity. 

A democracy’s judges are not merely interpreters of law—they are embodiments of the people’s faith in justice. If the Bench looks nothing like the people it serves, that faith begins to fray. The court’s ruling may ensure a more experienced judiciary, but will it also ensure a more representative one? 

That is the question we must now ask—not just in courts or law schools, but in every chamber where justice is debated. Can India imagine a future where competence and access are not opposites but co-authors of reform? Can we build a Bench that reflects not just age or experience, but the hope and multiplicity of a billion lives?  The robe, after all, must fit many shoulders.