CLA News / CLA President Steven Thiru’s speech at the Signing of a Memorandum of Understanding Between the Commonwealth Lawyers Association and the Supreme Court Bar Association of India
Good morning, My Lords, My Lady, President Vikas Singh, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen.
I am honoured to be here for the inaugural conference of the Supreme Court Bar Association of India (‘SCBA’), and the Commonwealth Lawyers Association (‘CLA’) is pleased to enter into this Memorandum of Understanding (‘MOU’) with the SCBA.
The legal profession in India is the largest in the Commonwealth. The Attorney General of India, R. Venkataramani, yesterday described the SCBA as the national Bar Association of India. The SCBA is therefore ideally placed to represent and advocate for the legal profession in India.
The CLA has within our scope 56 Commonwealth nations — which collectively represent the common law legal profession globally — and is therefore the singular voice for purely the common law world. The CLA is honoured to have leading Indian lawyers in our ranks. The late Soli Sorabjee — a doyen of the Indian Bar — was a Life President of the CLA. Santhaan Krishnan is a Past President and also a Life President of the CLA. Dr. Venkat Iyer is the Editor of The Commonwealth Lawyer, the CLA’s journal.
The CLA and the SCBA both share a rich heritage in the common law, and our mandates are, in the main, to promote and uphold the rule of law, particularly in the protection of the independence of the Bar and the judiciary.
Given our shared legacy and commonality of purpose, I see this MOU as an ideal partnership to coherently advance our individual and joint objectives.
This partnership is important, and even more critical today because of the existential challenges to the rule of law globally.
We live in a time where executive overreach is patent, where legislatures are gridlocked by partisanship, and where the independence of the judiciary is constantly under threat, if not progressively undermined. As we heard yesterday from Judges of the Supreme Court of India — and this is a common lament in many parts of the Commonwealth — judges are overworked, under-resourced, under-paid, and demoralised.
In short, the system of checks and balances inherent in our constitutional scheme of separation of powers is perched on the edge of an abyss. We watch anxiously as absolutism and authoritarian rule seem to be gaining ascendancy.
I see this MOU as more than just a formal document of friendship — it is that, but also something greater. I see it as a call to action (not to arms!) for us to collectively re-examine where we are and, more specifically, where we must position ourselves if we are to remain relevant and effective.
There is express reference in the MOU to the new international standard for the protection of the legal profession or the independence of the Bar, called the Council of Europe Convention for the Protection of the Profession of Lawyer (‘Luxembourg Convention’), adopted in March 2025.
We must individually and jointly champion this gold standard, for we require independent, fearless, and competent lawyers of unquestionable integrity to reset — and indeed to reimagine — the rule of law in these troubling times.
Thank you.
SCBA President Vikas Singh
From left: SCBA Vice-President Rahul Kaushik, SCBA Secretary Pragya Baghel, CLA President Steven Thiru, and SCBA President Vikas Singh
Steven Thiru
President
Commonwealth Lawyers Association
22 March 2026
Editor’s note: Read the CLA’s Declaration on the Adoption and Promotion of the Convention on the Protection of Lawyers (dated 19 January 2026) here.
