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2020 ] CURATIVE JURISDICTION OF HON’BLE SUPREME COURT A67

provision of O. XL, R. 5 of the Supreme Court Rules bars further application
for review in the same matter. The concern of the Court now is whether any
relief can be given to the petitioners who challenge the final judgment of this
Court, though after disposal of review petitions, complaining of the gross
abuse of the process of Court and irremedial injustice. In a State like India,
governed by rule of law, certainty of law declared and the final decision ren-
dered on merits in a lis between the parties by the highest Court in the coun-
try is of paramount importance. The principle of finality is insisted upon not
on the ground that a judgment given by the Apex Court is impeccable but on
the maxim “Interest reipublicae ut sit finis litium 1 ’.
41. At one time adherence to the principle of stare decisis was so rigidly fol-
lowed in the Courts governed by the English jurisprudence that departing
from an earlier precedent was considered here say. With the declaration of
the practice statement by the House of Lords, the highest Court in England
was enabled to depart from a previous decision when it appeared right to do
so. The next step forward by the highest Court to do justice was to review its
judgment inter partie to correct injustice. So far as this Court is concerned, we
have already pointed out above that it has been conferred the power to re-
view its own judgments under Art. 137 of the Constitution. The role of judici-
ary merely to interpret and declare the law was the concept of bygone age. It
is no more open to debate as it is fairly settled that the Courts can so mould
and lay down the law formulating principles and guidelines as to adapt and
adjust to the changing conditions of the society, the ultimate objective being
to dispense justice. In the recent years there is a discernable shift in the ap-
proach of the final Courts in favour of rendering justice on the facts presented
before them, without abrogating but by-passing the principle of finality of the
judgment. In Union of India and Another etc. v. Raghubir Singh (dead) by LRs.
etc. etc. [1989 (2) SCC 754] Pathak, C.J. speaking for the Constitution Bench
aptly observed :
“But like all principles evolved by man for the regulation of the so-
cial order, the doctrine of binding precedent is circumscribed in its
governance by perceptible limitations, limitations arising by refer-
ence to the need for re-adjustment in a changing society, a re-
adjustment of legal norms demanded by a changed social context.
This need for adapting the law to new urges in society brings home
the truth of the Holmesian aphorism that “the life of the law has not
been logic it has been experience” (Oliver Wendell Holmes : The
Common Law, p. 5), and again when he declared in another study
(Oliver Wendell Holmes : Common Carriers and the Common Law
(1943) 9 Cur LT 387, 388) that “the law is forever adopting new
principles from life at one end,” and “sloughing off” old ones at the
other. Explaining the conceptual import of what Holmes had said,
Julius Stone elaborated that it is by the introduction of new extra-
legal propositions emerging from experience to serve as premises,
or by experience guided choice between competing legal proposi-
tions, rather than by the operation of logic upon existing legal
propositions, that the growth of law tends to be determined (Julius
Stone : Legal Systems and Lawyers Reasoning, pp. 58-59).”

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1 It concerns the state that there be an end of law-suits. It is in the interest of the State that there
should be an end of law-suit.
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