Musings on India, the law, and policy
Posted in Constitution, Court, Democracy on Apr 15th, 2011
With the wisdom of hindsight and given the current political climate, would it be too wrong to say that Dr. Sen’s release on bail was all but a certainty? I am inclined to believe so, but what is noteworthy is the Supreme Court’s recent whipping up of a jurisprudence that completely trashes the notion of [...]
Posted in Constitution, Court, Human Rights on Feb 5th, 2011
I had the honour and privilege of speaking with Justice Albie Sachs, former judge of the Constitutional Court in South Africa – transcript in today’s op-ed is here. Those who were in NALSAR for Justice Yacoob’s visit in 2006 will remember his erudition and humility. Albie Sachs, his colleague at the Court is no exception [...]
Posted in Constitution, Court, Human Rights on Feb 3rd, 2011
Tehelka, which received unfettered access to the SIT report submitted to the Supreme Court reports the damning conclusions that the investigating team have arrived at against Narendra Modi. The report was kept under wraps by the SC until now. Three judges (Sathasivam, DK Jain and Aftab Alam) will sit this March to decide on the [...]
Posted in Constitution, Court, Politics on Nov 29th, 2010
In the current edition of The New York Review of Books, John Paul Stevens (former Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court) has reviewed “Peculiar Institution: America’s Death Penalty in an Age of Abolition” – a study on the issue by David Garland, who is the Vanderbilt Professor of Law at NYU. Through the course [...]
Posted in Constitution, Court, Democracy, Human Rights, religion on Jul 15th, 2010
Nussbaum’s piece for the NYTimes on why the burqa ban does not suit the liberal democracies of Europe. Great read – she rips apart legal and moralistic arguments for such a ban, piece by piece. I’ve pasted disjunctive extracts here. The criticism is based primarily on inviolable philosophical underpinnings, and how the said reasons fail [...]
Posted in Constitution, Court, Democracy, Human Rights, india, Rights, Rule of Law on Jun 5th, 2010
So much for the notion that all of constitutional law lies there in the Constitution waiting for a judge to read it fairly […] That is why the simplistic view of the Constitution devalues our aspirations, and attacks that our confidence, and diminishes us. A week back, Justice David H. Souter, who stepped down from [...]