Long-form essays on Indian constitutional law and legal thought. One serious piece every two to three weeks, by our writers and invited contributors. Read at length, share, return to.
Kesavananda was conceived to defend the Constitution against a Parliament that had begun to amend it at will. Fifty years later, the doctrine has done its job — and a good deal more.
The Constituent Assembly looked at American due process in 1948 and refused it after Frankfurter himself counselled against it. Thirty years later the Supreme Court read it back into the Constitution and forty years on, Indian scholarship is still pretending t
The Chief Justice's power to constitute benches and assign cases is now treated as plenary. It was not designed to be. The four-judges press conference of 2018 raised the question; eight years on, the power has grown without anyone settling whether it should h
M.C. Mehta gave India a rule of absolute liability that walked away from Rylands v Fletcher. Forty years on, the rule has no limiting principle, no statutory home, and an enforcement record that rides on it as if it were settled law.
Long-form essays on Indian constitutional law and legal thought. One serious piece every two to three weeks, by our writers and invited contributors. Read at length, share, return to.
