En passant is a move in chess. It refers to a pawn capture. The capture is so effortless, it is imagined to be ‘in passing‘. There is a pawn that is ‘passing‘ too, literally, when it is won.

Hon’ble Judges of Supreme Court of India are not averse to ‘in passing‘ orations. In Richpal Singh v. Ghasi, (2014) 8 SCC 918 it was “mentioned en passant that excessive reporting of Judgments is ‘case law diarrhoea’.”

It is not always the case though that the Judge itself recognizes its oration to be en passant. Judges are hard pressed animals. In State of Bihar v. Murad Ali Khan, (1988) 4 SCC 655 Division Bench of Hon’ble Justice Venkatachalliah and Hon’ble Justice R. Misra had held, “protection against re-prosecution after acquittal has received constitutional guarantee under Article 20(2)”. Recently, in Union of India v. Purushottam, [Civil Appeal No. 7133 of 2008] SC has clarified however that the obiter in Murad was “expressed en passant” and does not correctly state the law.

Hon’ble Justice Vikramjit Sen’s principled issue against obiter dicta is now well known. I have already written on the same. In Purushottam, Justice Sen labelled 27 year old observations as “in passing“. And even more recently in Sher Singh v. State of Haryana [Criminal Appeal No. 1592 of 2011], he wrote, “the bludgeoning burden of obiter dicta invariably causes confusion“.

Trivia: ‘En passant‘ is also the name of a contemptuous article called in question before High Court at Bombay in 1922 (72 Ind. Cas. 73). The object of the writer was to convey to his readers that Judges are the creatures of the Executive. The relevant paragraph had the title, ‘Long Live our Judges‘.