P.N. Eswara Iyer v. Supreme Court of India, (1980) 4 SCC 680 at page 686
13. We must make it perfectly plain, right at the outset, that audi alteram partem is a basic value of our judicial system. Hearing the party affected is too deeply embedded in the consciousness of our constitutional order. The question is about the quality, content and character of "hearing" in the special "review" situation. Incidentally, we may deal with oral hearing and its importance in the court process, the possibilities of its miniaturisation and, in certain categories its substitution by written submissions.
14. We agree that public hearing is of paramount significance. Justice, in the Indian Republic, is public; and if Judges shun the halls of court, read papers at home, confer in private and issue final fiats without listening to the Bar as the representative of the seekers of justice, the rule of law could well darken into an arcane trick and back-door diktats issued from "robed" adjudicators stain the escutcheon of justice. We also agree that oral advocacy has a non-fungible importance in the forensic process which the most brilliant brief cannot match and the most alert Judge cannot go without. The intellectual jallywork of intricate legal reasoning and impassioned sculpture of delicate factual emphasis may often be beyond the craftsmanship of pen and paper. There is no controversy that disposal by circulation, Secretariat fashion, cannot become a general judicial technique nor silent notings replace Bench-Bar dialogues. We must clarify one point. "Circulation", in the judicial context, merely means, not in court through oral arguments but by discussion at judicial conference. Judges, even under the amended rule, must meet, collectively cerebrate and reach conclusions. Movement of files with notings cannot make do. Otherwise, mutual persuasion, reasoned dissent and joint judgment will be defeated and machinisation of opinion and assertions of views in absentia will deprive judicial noetics of that mental cross-fertilisation essential for a Bench decision. The learned Solicitor General strongly urged that he was at one with counsel opposite on this point. We agree.
P.N. Eswara Iyer v. Supreme Court of India, (1980) 4 SCC 680 at page 688
19. This Court, as Sri Garg rightly emphasised, has assigned special value to public hearing, and courts are not caves nor cloisters but shrines of justice accessible for public prayer to all the people. Rulings need not be cited for this basic proposition. But every judicial exercise need not be a public show. When Judges meet in conference to discuss it need not be televised on the nation's network. The right to be heard is of the essence but hearing does not mean more than fair opportunity to present one's point on a dispute, followed by a fair consideration thereof by fair minded Judges. Let us not romanticise this process nor stretch it to snap it. Presentation can be written or oral, depending on the justice of the situation. Where oral persuasiveness is necessary it is unfair to exclude it and, therefore, arbitrary too. But where oral presentation is not that essential, its exclusion is not obnoxious. What is crucial is the guarantee of the application of an instructed, intelligent, impartial and open mind to the points presented. A blank Judge wearied by oral aggression is prone to slumber while an alert mind probing the "papered" argument may land on vital aspects. To swear by orality or to swear at manuscript advocacy is as wrong as judicial allergy to arguments in court. Often-times, it is the Judge who will ask for oral argument as it aids him much. To be left helpless among ponderous paper books without the oral highlights of counsel, is counterproductive. Extremism fails in law and life.
