Discuss the evolution of collegium system in India. Critically examine the advantages and disadvantages of the system of appointment of the Judges of the Supreme Court of India and that of the USA.

Articles 124(2) and 217 require the President to appoint judges after 'consultation' with the Chief Justice of India and other judges. The collegium system is a judicial construction placed on this text.

Evolution of the collegium

• First Judges case (S.P. Gupta, 1981): consultation does not mean concurrence — executive primacy.
• Second Judges case (1993): consultation read as concurrence; a collegium of the CJI and two senior-most judges given primacy.
• Third Judges case (1998, advisory opinion): collegium expanded to the CJI plus four senior-most judges for Supreme Court appointments.
• The 99th Amendment and NJAC Act (2014) created a six-member commission, but the Fourth Judges case (2015) struck both down for violating judicial independence, a basic feature; the revised Memorandum of Procedure remains unresolved.

India's collegium: merits and demerits

• Merits: insulates appointments from political patronage; peer assessment of legal competence; preserved the judiciary's independence through repeated executive confrontations.
• Demerits: opaque functioning without published criteria or minutes; allegations of favouritism ('uncle judges'); poor diversity — few women and under-represented communities; no secretariat or background-check machinery; appointments stall when the government sits on recommendations.

The US model

• The President nominates and the Senate confirms federal judges after public hearings — democratic legitimacy, transparency and rigorous scrutiny of records.
• Demerits: acute politicization — party-line confirmation battles and ideological litmus tests, magnified by lifetime tenure, make the Supreme Court an electoral prize.

Neither pure judicial self-selection nor political confirmation is ideal. India should retain judicial primacy while institutionalizing transparency — published criteria, reasoned recommendations, a permanent secretariat and time-bound executive action — completing the reform the NJAC debate left unfinished.