Perils Of Judicial Metaphors

Reflections on Value Wise Consultancy and the craft of judgingBy Every judge knows that difficult cases occasionally tempt colourful language. A striking metaphor can illuminate a legal principle, make a judgment memorable and sometimes even explain a complex doctrine more clearly than pages of reasoning. But there is also a danger. A metaphor is a servant of reasoning, not a substitute for it. And when the metaphor begins to drive the reasoning, it is worth asking whether the law has quietly taken a back seat.The recent decision of the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) in Value Wise Consultancy Private Limited v. Deputy Director, Directorate of Enforcement & others [2026 LLBiz NCLAT 261] provides an interesting illustration. The conclusion reached by the Tribunal is, in many respects, unsurprising. What makes the judgment interesting is not where it ends, but how it gets there.The judgment contains one of the more unusual metaphors to find its way into insolvency jurisprudence. The Ganges is not a river one normally expects to encounter while reading the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC). But the metaphor is not just a decorative one. It performs an important role in the Tribunal's reasoning. Describing the Code as not being intended to create a “holy Ganges” capable of washing away criminality, the Tribunal cautions against insolvency becoming a camouflage for ill-gotten wealth and contrasts the interests of creditors with what it describes as “national interest.” The metaphor is vivid and memorable.There is, of course, nothing objectionable about the use of metaphors in judicial writing. Quite the contrary. A well-chosen metaphor can illuminate a difficult legal concept far more effectively than a dense recital of statutory provisions. Many of us who have written judgments have occasionally reached for one. The difficulty arises only when the metaphor begins to carry the reasoning rather than illustrate it. That is the question which Value Wise invites us to consider.To understand why the Tribunal reached for such vivid imagery, one must first look at the controversy before it. Like many disputes at the intersection of the IBC and the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 (PMLA), the facts themselves were not particularly remarkable. The legal issue, however, proved more interesting than the facts. Before the commencement of the Corporate Insolvency Resolution Process (CIRP), the Enforcement Directorate (ED) had provisionally attached certain assets of the Corporate Debtor under the PMLA. The attachment was later confirmed by the Adjudicating Authority constituted under that statute. During the moratorium under section 14 of the IBC, the ED also withdrew more than ₹2.29 crore from the Corporate Debtor's bank account. Following the failure of the CIRP and the company's entry into liquidation, the liquidator questioned not merely the attachment of assets, but also the withdrawal of funds and the ED's directions preventing the Corporate Debtor's customers from releasing the outstanding receivables.The National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) declined to entertain the challenge, holding that the dispute belonged within the adjudicatory framework established under the PMLA. The NCLAT agreed. None of that is particularly startling. By now, the limits of the insolvency Tribunal's jurisdiction have been fairly well mapped by the Supreme Court. If Value Wise is likely to be remembered, it will not be because of that conclusion. It will be remembered because of the language the Tribunal employed in reaching it.Judgments, like good advocacy, often borrow from metaphor. Some of the most enduring judicial metaphors have survived long after the cases themselves have faded into obscurity. They endure because they illuminate a legal principle. Occasionally, however, a good metaphor begins to do something more. It starts nudging the reasoning in a particular direction.Perhaps that is what makes Value Wise so interesting.Once the Tribunal characterises the IBC as not being intended to become a “holy Ganges” washing away criminality, the reader instinctively begins to view the dispute through that prism. It also raises another question. Is the metaphor merely illustrating the conclusion, or has it quietly become part of the reasoning by which the conclusion is reached? That is not an easy question.Judicial writing is as much an exercise in persuasion as in exposition. A reader is seldom persuaded by a chain of propositions alone. The language matters. It shapes the way the reader approaches the legal issue even before the analysis is complete. For that reason, memorable metaphors deserve close attention. They often reveal not merely how a court explains its conclusions, but also how it has come to see the problem itself.There is another reason why the language of a judgment deserves attention. A judgment does much more than decide the dispute before the court. It...

Perils Of Judicial Metaphors

Rajasekhar V.K

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Rajasekhar V.K

Perils Of Judicial Metaphors

Rajasekhar V.K

This is a premium content Available exclusively to Our subscribers

INR 1099+GST

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Rajasekhar V.K

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