On his last working day, Supreme Court Justice Sanjay Karol delivered a candid farewell address acknowledging that judges are not infallible and cannot get every judgment right. He urged the judiciary to recognise its own limitations rather than assume omniscience. The remarks are significant because they touch the constitutional doctrine of judicial humility — the idea that the power to interpret the Constitution carries inherent limits, and that acknowledging error is itself a judicial virtue.

Justice Karol's farewell remarks engage a deep constitutional question: what is the nature of judicial authority under the Indian Constitution? The Supreme Court derives its power from Articles 32, 136, 141, and 142. Article 141 makes every Supreme Court declaration the law of the land, creating an impression of judicial finality and infallibility. But the Court has itself repeatedly corrected its past errors — through larger benches, reference orders, and curative petitions introduced in Rupa Ashok Hurra v. Ashok Hurra (2002).

The doctrine of judicial humility runs through several landmark rulings. In the ADM Jabalpur case (1976), the Court upheld suspension of Article 21 during Emergency — a decision it formally regretted in Puttaswamy (2017). That reversal is the most vivid example of the Court acknowledging it can be wrong.

For CLAT PG, the constitutional doctrine here is tripartite: (1) Judicial finality — Article 141 binds all courts below; (2) Judicial review — power under Articles 13, 32, and 226 to strike down legislation; and (3) Judicial humility — the recognition that constitutional interpretation evolves and courts can err. The curative petition mechanism and the practice of referring questions to larger Constitution Benches are structural acknowledgements that judges are fallible. Justice Karol's statement operationalises this doctrine at a human level: good judging requires epistemic humility, not the arrogance of assumed correctness.