Recent landmark SC judgments

Story hook

On 6 September 2018, at 11:35 a.m., a five-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court ruled by 4-1 in Navtej Singh Johar v. Union of India that Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, insofar as it criminalised consensual same-sex relations between adults, was unconstitutional. The Court overruled its own 2013 judgment in Suresh Kumar Koushal — and in doing so, decriminalised a section of the population that had lived under colonial criminal law since Lord Macaulay drafted Section 377 in 1860. Justice Dipak Misra (CJI), Justice R. F. Nariman, Justice Khanwilkar, Justice Chandrachud, and Justice Indu Malhotra — five judges who would each, that decade, deliver judgments redefining the rights of women, sexual minorities, and the constitutional limits of religious freedom.

Twenty-two days later, on 28 September 2018, the same Bench delivered the Sabarimala judgment in Indian Young Lawyers Association v. State of Kerala — by 4-1, with Justice Indu Malhotra alone dissenting — declaring that the bar on women aged 10-50 entering the Sabarimala temple violated Articles 14, 15, 21, and 25 of the Constitution. Eleven months earlier, on 22 August 2017, another 3-2 verdict in Shayara Bano v. Union of India had struck down instant Triple Talaq as unconstitutional. Five years later, on 17 October 2023, in Supriyo Chakraborty v. Union of India, the Court split 3-2 on whether to recognise same-sex marriage — the majority declining recognition while unanimously affirming the right to relationship and protection from discrimination.

This is the Supreme Court's most consequential decade in personal-rights jurisprudence since the Kesavananda Bharati era (1973). Four judgments — Sabarimala, Triple Talaq, Section 377, Same-sex marriage — collectively redrew the boundary between constitutional morality and traditional / religious practice.

Why this matters for UPSC

Landmark SC judgments are GS-II + GS-IV Mains gold. Asked in 2018 (Section 377), 2019 (Sabarimala), 2020 (Triple Talaq + personal law reform), 2023 (constitutional morality), and 2024 (Same-sex marriage). Prelims tests judgment names, year, bench composition, and the constitutional articles invoked. Interview boards probe the candidate's own views — be prepared with reasoned, balanced positions, not partisan answers.