Two recent, and rare, Op-Eds celebrating rather than berating our politicians (Shekhar Gupta) and our constitutional institutions (Jaithirth Rao) make interesting reading. In this context, readers may also be interested in this earlier post on …
Continue readingTag: Law and Politics
Miscarriage of Chief Justice
Shoaib Ghias in a prize winning essay in the Law and Social Inquiry puts forward an interesting set of arguments explaining recent judicial activism in Pakistan. This study explains the rise and fall of judicial …
Continue readingHow should liberals respond to terrorism?
Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Bangalore and now Delhi. There seems to be no let up in terrorist violence this year. How should liberals react to the deplorable violence perpetrated by terrorists, in the midst of a clamour …
Continue readingRandom thoughts on Defending the Indefensible
Today’s Hindu carries an op-ed by Vishnu V. Shankar on the subject mentioned in the title. Here is how he begins: What connects Captain Preston, Kehar Singh, Saddam Hussein, Manu Sharma, and Salim Hamdan? Besides …
Continue readingFocus on Nandigram
Events in Nandigram and Kolkata over the past year (and especially the last fortnight) reveal much about conflicting conceptions about the rule of law and governance in contemporary India. It is impossible to provide the …
Continue readingFrank Rich does a Harish Khare
I have been struck by how closely the global media is tracking the developing story in Pakistan, and how so many commentators in different parts of the world believe that events in that nation have …
Continue readingAndhyarujina on recent events in Pakistan
In a previous post, Vikram drew our attention to recent events in Pakistan, and invited comparisons to debates about judicial activism in India. Even the most bitter critic of judicial activism (in India or anywhere …
Continue readingRecent PIL cases decided by the Supreme Court
I thank V. Venkatesan for drawing my attention towards recent columns in the Business Standard by MJ Antony, several of which relate to ongoing legal developments in India. A month or so ago, Antony wrote …
Continue readingJudging and Politics: Using an American lens to raise some questions about the Indian situation
The latest issue of the New Yorker has a short but interesting assessment of the judicial output of the U.S. Supreme Court over the last year. The author of the article is the noted legal …
Continue readingMehta’s assessment of Supreme Court politics in India
The April 2007 issue of the Journal of Democracy has a feature on “India’s Unlikely Democracy” which includes an article by Pratap Bhanu Mehta titled “The Rise of Judicial Sovereignty.” Mehta’s piece reiterates some of …
Continue reading