The Editorial Team of the ‘Law and Other Things’ Blog is organizing the 3rd Courts and the Constitution Conference in collaboration with its institutional sponsors, the Centre for Constitutional Law, Policy & Good Governance, NALSAR University of Law and the School for Policy and Governance, Azim Premji University from 15-16th April, 2022. The event is taking place in a hybrid model, online as well as at the campus of NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad. Through the Conference, we envisage an annual exercise of examining the major constitutional law developments of the preceding calendar year. It is an attempt to bring together diverse voices from the bench, bar, academia and journalism to deliberate on the landmark legal developments of 2020-21 which are bound to have a long-term impact on governance and rights of the citizenry.
The inaugural edition of the Courts and the Constitution Conference took place on 26-27 January 2019, with the theme “2018: Year in Review”. It was a first-of-its-kind initiative in India and discussed the major legal developments and landmark judgments of the year 2018 in light of their long-term impact on the governance and rights of the Republic. The second edition of the conference, “The Republic at 70: Past, Present and Future Directions” was hosted on 25-26 January 2020. More than 25 legal luminaries participated in multiple panels on Developments in Equality Jurisprudence, Reforming Tribunals, Federalism and the Constitution, and Citizenship, Residency and the Constitution, as well as public guest lectures on capital punishment, among others.
The featured speakers in the past two editions included, inter alia, Arun Thiruvengadam, Sudhir Krishnaswamy, Arvind Narain, Chintan Chandrachud, Nizam Pasha, Suhrith Parthasarathy, Aparna Chandra, Anup Surendranath, Arundhati Katju, Alok Prasanna Kumar, Malavika Prasad, Harish Narsappa, Justice Swaminathan, Rohit De, Suchindran Bhaskaran, Ujwala Uppaluri, as well as N.R. Madhava Menon, M.P. Singh and Indira Jaising. The theme for the third edition of the Conference is ‘2020 & 2021 in Review’ as we were unable to organize this programme in 2021 owing to the pandemic induced difficulties.
We have following speakers lined up for the conference, you may find the brochure here:
April 15, 2022 (Friday)
10:30 A.M.- 11:30 A.M.
Inaugural Session
- Sidharth Chauhan (Assistant Professor, NALSAR): Overview of the Programme
- Faizan Mustafa (Vice-Chancellor, NALSAR): Welcoming Remarks
- Sitharamam Kakarala (Director of School of Policy and Governance, APU): Welcoming Remarks
- Bhavisha Sharma and Gayatri Gupta (Editors-in-Chief, LAOT): Welcoming Remarks
12:00 P.M.- 1:30 P.M.
Session I – The State of Judiciary
- Moderator: Sidharth Chauhan (Assistant Professor, NALSAR)
- Deepika Kinhal (Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, Bangalore)
- Anurag Bhaskar (Assistant Professor, Jindal Global Law School)
- Vivek Reddy (Senior Advocate, High Court of Telangana)
- Mihir Rajamane (Undergraduate Student, University of Oxford)
2:30 pm- 4 pm
Session II – Public Health Crisis and the Constitution
- Moderator: Dr. Amita Dhanda (Professor Emerita, NALSAR)
- Rajshekhar Rao (Senior Advocate, High Court of Delhi)
- Thulasi K. Raj (Advocate, High Court of Kerala)
- Alok Prasanna Kumar (Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, Bangalore)
4:30 pm – 6 pm
Session III – Shamnad Basheer Memorial Roundtable on Constitutional Law and Intellectual Property
- Moderator: Neeraj Grover (Assistant Professor of Law at the
- School of Policy and Governance, APU)
- Sanya Samtani (Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Pretoria)
- Aakanksha Kumar (Associate Professor, Jindal Global Law School)
- Rahul Bajaj (Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, New Delhi)
- Akshat Agrawal (Advocate, High Court of Patna)
April 16, 2022 (Saturday)
10:00 A.M.- 11:30 A.M.
Session IV – Developments in Indian Federalism
- Moderator: Alok Prasanna Kumar (Vidhi Cente for Legal Policy, Bangalore)
- Shadan Farasat (Advocate, Supreme Court)
- Suhrith Parthasarathy (Advocate, High Court of Chennai)
- Pankhuri Agrawal (Ph.D. candidate, NALSAR)
- Abhijeet Rawaley (Advocate, High Court of Punjab and Haryana) and Dayaar Singla (Advocate)
12:00 P.M.- 1:30 P.M.
Session V – Environmentalism and Governance
- Moderator: Rahul Mohanty (Assistant Professor, NALSAR)
- Geetanjoy Sahu (Associate Professor, TISS Mumbai)
- Shibani Ghosh (Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi)
- Lavanya Suresh (Assistant Professor, BITS, Hyderabad)
- Ria Yadav and Dylan D’Souza (Democracy and Constitutional Values Fellowship)
2:30 P.M.- 4:30 P.M.
Session VI – Civil Liberties and Criminal Justice
- Moderator: Dr. Manisha Sethi (Associate Professor, NALSAR)
- Abhinav Sekhri (Advocate, High Court of Delhi)
- Nikita Sonavane (Criminal Justice & Police Accountability Project, Bhopal)
- Disha Wadekar (Advocate, High Court of Delhi)
- Chandni Chawla (Advocate, High Court of Mumbai)
- Prerna Vij (Postgraduate Student, Ashoka University)
4:30 P.M.
Closing Remarks
Registration
Kindly note that there are no registration fees and the event is open to the public, however travel, accommodation and food will not be provided for those who wish to attend offline. We will share the WebEx links to the email IDs for registered online attendees. Kindly fill the form here.
Contact
For further information, please email us at: [email protected] with the subject – “Query: Courts and Constitution Conference 2022”.
