THE ASSENT AND DISSENT OF JUSTICE DHANANJAYA Y. CHANDRACHUD DISHA GUPTA KNOW YOUR JUSTICE Thu, Nov 21, 2019, at ,11:18 AM Justice Dhananjaya Yeshwant Chandrachud was born in 1959 and is the son of YV Chandrachud, the longest-serving Chief Justice of India. He completed his LLB from Delhi University and went to Harvard for his LLM. DY Chandrachud was appointed a judge of the Supreme Court of India on May 13, 2016, by the then President Pranab Mukherjee. He will be in office until 2024. Justice Chandrachud was also the Chief Justice of the Allahabad High Court from October 31, 2013, until appointment to the Supreme Court. Before this, he was also a judge in the Bombay High Court from March 29, 2000. Justice Chandrachud was also appointed as the director of the Maharashtra Judicial Academy. Justice DY Chandrachud practiced law at the Supreme Court of India and the Bombay High Court. Apart from law, he was also a visiting professor of Comparative Constitutional Law at the University of Mumbai and the Oklahoma University School of Law, US. He has also given lectures across prestigious international universities like Harvard Law School, Yale Law School, Australian National University and the University of Witwatersrand, South Africa. Justice DY Chandrachud was also a speaker at conferences organized by bodies of the United Nations including the United Nations High Commission on Human Rights, International Labour Organisation and United Nations Environmental Programme, the World Bank and Asian Development Bank. IMPORTANT JUDGEMENTS BY JUSTICE DY CHANDRACHUD It has been only three-and-half years since his elevation as the judge of the Supreme Court, but Justice DY Chandrachud has been already a part of several benches which delivered landmarks judgments in high-profile cases like the Ayodhya land dispute. Be it the matter of adultery or right to privacy, decriminalizing section 377 of the IPC or the contentious Sabarimala issue or validity of Aadhaar scheme, Justice Chandrachud had penned path-breaking judgments. Justice Chandrachud is noticeable and prominent in his views in the Supreme Court, often differing from his colleagues and crystal clear in his observations. AYODHYA JUDGEMENT- Justice DY Chandrachud was a part of the 5judge bench when The Apex Court unanimously ordered setting up of a trust by the government that would eventually pave the way for construction of a temple in Ayodhya at the disputed site where a 16th century Babri Masjid was razed by a Hindu mob on December 6, 1992. A five-judge bench that delivered the landmark judgment also ordered allotment of 5-acre land to Muslims for construction of a mosque within Ayodhya. SECTION 377 JUDGEMENT- He was also part of a five-judge Constitution bench unanimously decriminalized part of the 158-year-old colonial law in the case of Navtej Singh Johar v. Union of India under Section 377 of the IPC which criminalizes consensual unnatural sex between consenting adults, saying it violated the rights to equality. ADULTERY JUDGEMENT- In another five-judge bench, Justice Chandrachud in a unanimous verdict held Section 497 of the Indian Penal Code which criminalized adultery, to be unconstitutional on the ground of being arbitrary, archaic and violative of the right to equality and privacy. Justice Y.V. Chandrachud in the Sowmithri Vishnu v. Union of India case had upheld the constitutional validity of Section 497 of the Indian Penal Code that made adultery a criminal offense. His son Justice DY Chandrachud in a landmark judgment overruled this in Joseph Shine v. Union of India with adultery no longer a criminal offense. SABARIMALA JUDGEMENT- The judge, who was elevated to the apex court on May 13, 2016, also concurred with the majority verdict in Indian Young Lawyers Association v. State of Kerala, popularly called the Sabarimala case, in holding that the practice of prohibiting women of menstruating age from entering the Sabarimala temple was discriminatory and violative of women's fundamental rights. AADHAAR ACT JUDGEMENT- In a strong dissent, Justice Chandrachud differed with other members of the 5-judge Constitution bench which by a majority verdict upheld the constitutional validity of the unique biometric identity number Aadhaar. Justice Chandrachud held Aadhaar to be unconstitutional and violative of fundamental rights. He said that Aadhaar is about identification and is an instrument that facilitates a proof of identity and it must not be allowed to obliterate constitutional identity. EUTHANASIA JUDGEMENT- Justice Chandrachud was part of the landmark judgment by a five-judge Constitution bench that recognized 'living will' made by terminally-ill patients for passive euthanasia. On 9 March 2018, the Supreme Court of India legalized passive euthanasia by means of the withdrawal of life support to patients in a permanent vegetative state. The decision was made as part of the verdict in a case involving Aruna Shanbaug, who had been in a Persistent Vegetative State (PVS) until her death in 2015. PRIVACY JUDGEMENT- Justice Chandrachud, son of longest-serving Chief Justice of India YV Chnadrachud, wrote the lead judgment for the nine-judge constitution bench in the Justice KS Puttaswamy v. Union of India case in which it was unanimously held that the right to privacy constituted a fundamental right under the Constitution.