The recent rulings of the judiciary have defended the personal liberty of citizens. However, there are many instances where the judiciary failed to uphold liberty.
Personal liberty is an inalienable human right, or a natural human right. It is the freedom of one human being to determine and follow his own path in life.
Personal freedom is the literary term used to denote the ambiguity of freedom in a time of great change between the old age and new. The idea of personal freedom is the cornerstone of any democratic system, which assumes that each member of society possesses free will and can make his own decisions. Yet personal freedom is strictly limited by those boundaries that keep a society united: our own moral principles and common sense.
Article 21 of the Constitution of India, 1950 provides that, “No person shall be deprived of his life or personal liberty except according to procedure established by law.” 'Life' in Article 21 of the Constitution is not merely the physical act of breathing.
The Supreme Court of India has pronounced that the right under Article 21 includes the right to live with human dignity which means that Article 21 is the breath of life for the rights it subsumes within itself. The right conferred by Article 21 pertains to liberty of person and not to liberty of action, i.e., it guarantees protection against unlawful detention of a person but not against lawful detention.
The following rulings highlight the role of judiciary as the first line of defence against the deprivation of the liberty of citizens.
A recent order of the Supreme Court found senior advocate Prashant Bhushan guilty of contempt for two tweets, one relating to the Chief Justice of India astride an expensive motorcycle and the other a comment that the Supreme Court, in his opinion, played a role in the destruction of democracy in India over the last six years. We saw that there are many instances where the Judiciary failed to uphold the liberty of individuals.
