A fortnightly feature inspired by I-CONnect’s weekly “What’s New in Public Law” feature that addresses the lacuna of a one-stop-shop public law newsletter in the Indian legal space.  

What’s new at LAOT

 Sughosh Joshi, 2023 Year in Review (examines events of importance for the beleaguered Legislature, the boisterous Executive, and the bewildered Judiciary in the past year). 

Lately in Academic Articles:  

1. Edited by Manisha Sethi, Communities and Courts: Religion and Law in Modern India, Routledge (demonstrates that theories of religious pluralism, secularism, law, and order, are integral to understand how the religious and law are intricately linked in modern India and should be understood within a broader social and political context).

2. Nikunj Kulshreshtha, Enacting a Law on Sexual Assault Using Deceptive Means in India, Liverpool Law Review (examines the jurisprudence on rape by deception in India and English courts to draw some lessons and formulate a test for criminalising deceptive sex).

3. Anamika Das, Law and Sexual Violence: A Critical Ethnography of Higher Education in India, International Journal for the Semiotics of Law (tracks the history of sexual violence laws in India, with an emphasis on violence in higher educational institutes and through empirical evidence from Raipur, analyses the limitations of the law in combating gender violence when it is consciously interpreted against minorities).

4. Vaibhav Chadha & Deepali Poddar, The Right to Silence Under Scrutiny: Unveiling the Significance of Section 313 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of India, Statute Law Review (analyses how India falls short of upholding the right to silence by examining various apex court decisions and how silence is used to draw adverse inferences in contravention of Article 20(3) of the Constitution).

5. Sai Priya Chodavarapu, Ilenia Ruggiu, Culture and the Judiciary: The Anthropologist Judge, Jindal Global Law Review (book review of Ilenia Ruggiu’s work on the legal techniques used by Western judges to face the challenges posed by multiculturalism).

6. Christophe Jaffrelot, Facets of India’s Illiberalism, Chapter from The Oxford Handbook of Illiberalism (discusses the ethno-nationalist ideology of Hindutva and the resultant growth of illiberalism in India across different areas such as caste and gender since 2014).

7. Saptarshi Mandal, The Difference Method Makes: Judicial Restraint and Judicial Creativity in Rana Nahid v Sahidul Chisti, National Law School Journal (drawing from the case of Rana Nahid v. Sahidul Chisti, the author discusses where judicial restraint and creativity are necessary).

8. RMLNLU Journal’s 15th Volume was recently published. Some articles from the publication include:

i. Yogesh Pratap Singh & Nanditta Batra, A Samaritan Court: An Assessment of the Supreme Court of India in Saving Road Accident Victims

ii. Aparna Singh & Rajeev Kumar Singh, A Revisit of Ancient to Post-Modern Legal Perspective of Prostitution in India: Contemporary Laws and Issues

iii. Garima Pal & Aastha Tiwari, The Socio-Legal Viability of the Uniform Civil Code in India

9. Comparative Constitutional Law and Administrative Law Journal’s 8th Volume was recently published. Some articles from the publication include:

i. Atharva Chandra, Editorial: What Makes a Judge? Understanding Supreme Court’s Decision in Anna Mathews v. Supreme Court of India

ii. Subham Dayma, Scope of “Minority” under Articles 29 and 30 of the Constitution of India with Reference to the Sikh & Jain Minority Case

iii. Nitish Dubey & Shivank Verma, Constitutionality of Caste Based Reservations: Uncovering Loopholes and Inconsistencies. 

Elsewhere Online 

1. Gautam Bhatia, Federalism, “Permanent Changes” and the Article 370 Judgment: An Interpretive Note, Indian Constitutional Law and Philosophy Blog. (A round-up of all blog posts on the ICLP Blog dealing with the Article 370 case can be accessed here).

2. Alok Prasanna Kumar, The Selective Misinterpretation of Article 370, Economic and Political Weekly.

3. Lakshmi Menon, Old wine in a new bottle? Examining the Supreme Court’s recent prioritisation of reformation in capital sentencing, Project 39A Blog.

4. Abhinav Sekhri, The Criminal Codes are Dead; Long Live the Criminal Codes, The Proof of Guilt Blog.

5. Akshit Chawla, 3 New Legislations Give Govt Sweeping New Powers To Control Journalism, Entertainment & Internet, Article 14 Blog.

6. Gautam Bhatia, The Indian Constitution through the Lens of Power – V: The People, I.CONnect Blog. 

Listen Up 

1. Gautam Bhatia and Milan Vaishnav, The Indian Supreme Court in the Modi Era, Grand Tamasha (discussing the relationship between judicial assertiveness and the strength of the government in power, as mentioned in Bhatia’s book Unsealed Covers: A Decade of the Constitution, the Courts and the State).

2. Nigdha Sharma, The big takeaways from Telecom Bill 2023, Daybreak by The Ken (highlighting the key changes introduced through the Telecom Bill 2023).

3. Zeba Sikora and Sampad, Decoding the three new criminal law bills, In Focus by The Hindu (analysing the major changes envisaged in the new criminal law bills). 

Opportunities and Other Things

1. Call for Abstracts for  1st RGNUL Young Scholars Conference on Emerging Trends in India’s Foreign Policy. The last date for submission is 10 January 2024.

2. 1st USLLS-EquiLaw National Essay Writing Competition, 2023. The deadline for submission is 14 January 2023.

3. Call for Papers by GNLU SRDC ADR Magazine (Volume – IV Issue – II) . The last date for submission is 20 January 2024.

4. Call for Papers by International Sustainability Conclave 2024. The last date for submission is 30 January 2023.

5. Call for Papers by RMLNLU Journal on Communication, Media, Entertainment, and Law. The last date for submission is 3 February 2024.

6. Call for application for Teach for India Fellowship 2024. The last date to apply is 4 February 2024.

7. Essay Competition on the occasion of National Consumer Day 2023  by NLSIU Bangalore. The last date for submission is 5 February 2024.

This initiative was started by Eeshan Sonak, Aditi Bhojnagarwala, Jeetendra Vishwakarma, and Saranya Ravindran from the Law and Other Things Student Team with the guidance of Surbhi Karwa and Gaurav Mukherjee.