That is alien to constitutional structure.

I. The Constitution and Procedure Already Provide Corrective Mechanisms

The Supreme Court is not without power to revisit its own decisions. But that power is carefully channelled. Article 137 of the Constitution expressly confers on the Supreme Court the power to review its judgments or orders, subject to the provisions of any law made by Parliament or rules made under Article 145. That is the constitutional route for reconsideration. It is not an open-ended licence to reopen matters because public reaction has turned hostile.

The procedural discipline of review is further reflected in the Supreme Court Rules. Review is not an appeal in disguise. It is narrowly confined and traditionally lies only on limited grounds such as an error apparent on the face of the record. Even where the Court has crafted an extraordinary curative jurisdiction, that power has been hedged with severe limitations. In Rupa Ashok Hurra v. Ashok Hurra, the Court recognised the curative petition as a residual device to prevent gross miscarriage of justice after dismissal of a review petition, but only in the rarest circumstances and under strict procedural safeguards. The significance of Rupa Ashok Hurra lies not merely in creating a curative remedy, but in underscoring that even the Court's exceptional powers must remain rule-bound.

The jurisprudential point is simple: the Constitution permits correction, but only through known legal forms.

If a bench's order is informally revisited, administratively diluted, urgently relisted, or effectively placed before another bench because online sentiment has intensified, the Court risks bypassing the very architecture that Article 137 and the Supreme Court Rules were meant to preserve.

II. Finality of Judgments Is Not a Technicality; It Is a Structural Value

Indian constitutional adjudication has long recognised that finality is an integral component of the administration of justice. Finality is not opposed to justice; it is one of the conditions that make justice possible. A legal system in which every order remains vulnerable to reputational aftershocks is a system in which law loses authority.

This is why the Court has repeatedly stressed that review jurisdiction is extremely limited. In Lily Thomas v. Union of India, the Supreme Court reiterated that a review cannot be used to rehear and correct an allegedly erroneous decision on merits; that would convert review into an appeal, which the law does not permit. Likewise, in Kamlesh Verma v. Mayawati, the Court restated the settled principles governing review and made clear that repetition of old arguments, minor inconsequential mistakes, or a mere possibility of another view are no grounds for review. The narrowness of review is not accidental. It is the legal expression of finality.

Finality serves multiple constitutional functions. It protects equality by ensuring that litigants are bound by the same procedural rules rather than by their ability to generate public outrage. It protects certainty by allowing citizens, governments, and lower courts to order their conduct based on authoritative rulings. And it protects institutional legitimacy by demonstrating that judgments can be altered only through law, not through agitation.

If, however, virality begins to perform the practical work of reopening cases, then finality becomes contingent on public mood. That is not constitutionalism. That is procedural instability.

III. Social Media or Cannot Become an Unrecognised Source of Jurisdiction

The Court is, of course, not expected to exist in civic isolation. Public criticism of judgments is legitimate and often valuable. Constitutional courts do not sit above criticism. But there is a profound difference between a court being aware of public reaction and a court allowing that reaction to influence whether or how a concluded matter is reopened. Government or public may be unhappy with outcome of certain judgements, but the Court is only bound rule of law.

Jurisdiction cannot arise from trending outrage. There is no constitutional provision that recognises social media backlash as a ground for rehearing. There is no procedural rule that treats digital controversy as equivalent to an error apparent on the face of the record. There is no doctrine under which online sentiment can displace review, recall, or curative standards. To permit such a development in practice, even without admitting it in theory, is to allow a shadow system of appellate correction to emerge outside the law.

That is especially dangerous in a country like India, where public debate is often polarised, selective, and mediated by influence. Not every litigant can command online attention. Not every error becomes a trend. If the Court appears more likely to revisit orders that provoke reputational storms, the administration of justice will cease to be even formally equal. The system will begin to privilege visibility over legal merit.

IV. Judicial Discipline Requires Restraint Even in the Face of Criticism

Judicial discipline is not merely a matter of lower courts following higher courts. It also describes the Supreme Court's discipline toward its own processes, precedents, and jurisdictional boundaries. A court of final authority must be especially careful not to blur the distinction between review and rehearing, between correction and capitulation, and between legal reconsideration and institutional anxiety.

This is where bench discipline and procedural regularity assume constitutional significance. The Court has often emphasised the importance of judicial propriety, certainty, and orderly development of law. A system in which one bench's order appears vulnerable to being neutralised through subsequent administrative or judicial manoeuvres, triggered by public controversy, weakens both bench strength conventions and the predictability of adjudication.

The danger is not limited to formally reasoned orders. Even the appearance that social pressure can secure relisting, bench reconstitution, oral dilution of a prior order, or a second bite at the cherry where no remedy exists can be institutionally corrosive. Courts speak as much through conduct as through judgments. Procedural elasticity in high-visibility cases sends a message to the Bar and to litigants: if you cannot win in law, try winning in public.

That message must never be allowed to take hold.

V. Curative Jurisdiction Is a Safety Valve, Not a Licence for Mood-Based Reconsideration

The curative petition is often invoked as evidence that the Supreme Court's procedural architecture is flexible. But that is a misunderstanding. The curative jurisdiction developed in Rupa Ashok Hurra was justified precisely because it was disciplined, residual, and exceptional. It was not meant to create a broad equitable power to revisit unpopular decisions. On the contrary, the doctrine was carefully designed to protect finality while permitting correction only in cases of gross miscarriage of justice, such as violation of principles of natural justice or apprehension of bias, and only after review had failed.

The lesson of the curative jurisdiction is therefore the opposite of what public-pressure reconsideration suggests. It teaches that even extraordinary power must be juridically structured. It cannot be exercised because the Court feels compelled to respond to outrage.

To transform the Court's internal flexibility into a general responsiveness to digital anger is to misread the constitutional ethos of self-correction.

VI. The Rule of Law Requires the Court to Resist Performative Responsiveness

In the contemporary climate, every institution is under pressure to appear responsive, empathetic, and aligned with dominant sentiment. But a court cannot allow itself the luxury of performative sensitivity. The judiciary's counter-majoritarian function exists precisely because legality and popularity do not always coincide.

The Supreme Court's role is not to mirror public emotion in real time. It is to test claims against constitutional principle, statutory text, evidence, and doctrine. There will be cases in which the legally correct decision is unpopular; there will be others in which a poorly reasoned decision attracts justified criticism. In either situation, the institutional response must remain legal. If the decision is wrong, it must be corrected through review, recall where maintainable, reference where doctrinally warranted, or curative jurisdiction where the law so permits. But if the response is shaped primarily by outrage, the Court ceases to model constitutional fidelity and begins to display reputational nervousness.

That would injure the rule of law far more deeply than any single mistaken order.

The Supreme Court of India is the final constitutional court, not a forum for iterative correction driven by social media tempers. The Constitution already provides pathways for self-correction. Article 137 permits review. The Supreme Court Rules impose discipline. Lily Thomas and Kamlesh Verma insist that review is narrow. Rupa Ashok Hurra permits curative correction only in the rarest cases to prevent gross miscarriage of justice. Together, these mechanisms reflect a simple but indispensable principle: even the Supreme Court must correct itself according to law.

That principle is endangered when public outrage begins to function as an unwritten trigger for reopening outcomes. The moment online reaction is seen as capable of producing a de facto intra-court appeal, the Court risks subordinating jurisdiction to sentiment, procedure to pressure, and finality to fame.

A constitutional court may listen to criticism. It may learn from it. But it cannot allow criticism, least of all the volatile, unequal, and often ill-informed criticism of social media, to harden into an alternative appellate structure.

The Supreme Court's authority depends not on its sensitivity to trends, but on its fidelity to legal form. It must remain final not because it never errs, but because when it corrects error, it does so only through the discipline of law.

Author is an Advocate on Record , Supreme Court of India. Views are personal.