The plea of AG and other counsel for respondents in the case being heard by the Supreme Court’s five-Judge Bench for reference to a larger Bench comprising 11 Judges has become controversial, with the petitioners’ …
Continue readingTag: Appointment of Judges
Judicial Appointments in India
In a new book published by Oxford University Press this month, entitled “The Informal Constitution: Unwritten Criteria in Selecting Judges for the Supreme Court of India”, I explore the prevalence of three informal eligibility criteria …
Continue readingRethinking the Collegium Model
Guest Post by Smaran Shetty, NUJS. The collective legacy of S.P. Gupta v. President of India (first judge’s case), Supreme Court Advocates on Record Association v. Union of India (second judge’s case) and Special Reference …
Continue readingOf Judicial Retirement
Why is the mandatory retirement age for Supreme Court judges and High Court judges different in India? I addressed this question in a paper published in the EPW last week. Supreme Court judges in India …
Continue readingJustice Verma and the Appointment of Justice Punchhi
A recent interview of Justice J.S.Verma’s on CNN-IBN, with Karan Thapar, seems to suggest that, as the Chief Justice of India, he was against Justice Punchhi’s elevation to the Supreme Court, and even wrote a …
Continue readingConstitutional Fidelity or Turf War? The Promise and Pitfalls of Judicial Activism in Pakistan
The South Asia Initiative at Harvard recently hosted a panel discussion on constitutionalism in Pakistan. Speakers included, Justice Khalil-ur-Rehman Ramday, Supreme Court of Pakistan, Osama Siddique, SJD Candidate, Harvard Law SchoolBeena Sarwar, Senior Journalist, Jang …
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Countermajoritarianism, the Court and the Capital
Unelected courts in constitutional democracies are described as “countermajoritarian” fundamentally because they carry the power to invalidate law enacted by the directly elected representatives of the people. However, in a purely formal sense, is the …
Continue readingSupreme Court Composition (1985-2010)
In a study which has been published in this week’s edition of the EPW (available here), I examined the composition of the Supreme Court of India between 1985 and 2010 (i.e. between the terms of …
Continue readingFrom the Cradle to…62
In this edit piece in the Times of India (September 29, 2010) I argued that the Constitution (One Hundred and Fourteenth Amendment) Bill, 2010 (available here) deserves praise and criticism. It deserves praise because it …
Continue readingDworkin had Hand
While I am interested by the fine legal arguments and counter arguments which have been made here regarding the retirement of Justice A.P. Shah, and the wider debate concerning the elevation of judges to the …
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