NEW CHIEF JUSTICE SWORN IN: Justice Visheshwar Nath Khare was sworn in as Chief Justice of the Indian Supreme Court. You can read The Hindu's coverage here and the Times of India's article here. The Hindu's article is more detailed.

Chief Justices on the Indian Supreme Court are not as influential as their U.S. counterparts. They generally serve shorter terms because of a mandatory retirement age of 65 for all S.C. Justices. Indian S.C. Justices are generally picked from state high courts, so they are usually in their sixties to begin with. Khare is 63 and his birthday is in May, so he'll be C.J. for less than two years. In addition, the criterium for elevation to Chief Justice is almost always seniorty, so there is little opportunity for political wrangling over the appointment.

Finally, the caseload for the Indian Supreme Court is staggering; according to Charles Epp's The Rights Revolution (1998), the Court had close to a quarter million cases on its docket in 1990, and it disposed of almost 60,000. By contrast, about 7,000 cases are filed in the U.S. Supreme Court each year, and full hearings are granted to around 100. As Epp explains, the legislature's response to the caseload of the Indian Supreme Court was not greater Court discretion over the docket, but more members on the Court itself. According to the Indian Supreme Court's own website, there are now 23 sitting Justices, and, I believe, three vacant seats. Exerting control over a Court with two dozen members and hundreds of thousands of pending cases is quite a task.

So, good luck, Justice Khare, for the next seventeen months!