NEW DELHI: Chief Justice of India (CJI) DY Chandrachud on Saturday said it was important for judges of the Supreme Court to retire to pass on the mantle to succeeding generations who can rejig the legal framework for the evolution of the society.

“In a sense, it’s important that the judges must retire,” the CJI said at the inaugural session of the 21st edition of Hindustan Times Leadership Summit. “And why do I say that? Because it’s too much of a responsibility to cast on human beings, in terms of their own infallibility, by postulating that they should not retire from office. Judges are human beings, you are prone to error,” he said in a conversation with HT’s national legal editor Utkarsh Anand.

The CJI also underlined that the retirement of judges, and their replacement by the next generation of judges, had other advantages as well.

“Societies evolve… What was par for the course in 1980 is no longer par for the course in 2023 and it’s not going to be there in 2035. So it is important that you must pass on the mantle to succeeding generations who would be able to point out errors of the past and rejig or reset the legal principles, legal framework, for society to evolve,” he said.

“Because giving that sort of power to unelected judges to continue for life in the Indian context, I feel was wisely not adopted by the Indian Constitution so as to allow for a source of change for transformation of legal principles as new and succeeding generations to take and hold judicial office,” the country’s top judge said in response to a question whether 65 years was too young an age for a Supreme Court judge to retire.

To be sure, he declined to speak on what should be the retirement age. “What the age of retirement should be for the judges of the high courts and Supreme Court, I’m not Parliament so I won’t hazard an answer to that,” he said.