Judicial activism, an approach to the exercise of judicial review, or a description of a particular judicial decision, in which a judge is generally considered more willing to decide constitutional issues and to invalidate legislative or executive actions.
Its emergence can be traced back to 1893, when Justice Mahmood of Allahabad High Court delivered a dissenting judgement.
It was a case of an under trial who could not afford to engage a lawyer, So the question was whether the court could decide his case by merely looking his papers, Justice Mahmood held that the pre-condition of the case being “heard” would be fulfilled only when somebody speaks.
The following trends were the cause for the emergence of judicial activism — expansion of rights of hearing in the administrative process, excessive delegation without limitation, expansion of judicial review over administration, promotion of open government, indiscriminate exercise of contempt power, exercise of jurisdiction when non-exist; over extending the standard rules of interpretation in its search to achieve economic, social and educational objectives; and passing of orders which are unworkable.