Musings on India, the law, and policy
Posted in Court, Rule of Law on Jan 26th, 2012
One of John Grisham’s celebrated novels titled “The Firm” revolves around the life of a young law associate faced with the dilemma of disclosing legally privileged confidential information about his mob-clients and subsequently losing his license. The movie with the same name starring Tom Cruise is equally fascinating with the whole story spinning around this [...]
Posted in Court on Dec 7th, 2011
Raghbir Singh Sehrawat owned a small plot of land in Haryana. In 2006, the State Government, vide a notification, decided to acquire his land to initiate the development of an industrial sector. Subsequent to the notification, Raghbir Singh filed a petition before the high court wherein it was argued that apart from being agricultural land, [...]
(An edited version of this article has appeared in the 10 Nov. Edition of DNA India and may be accessed here) The recent statements of Dr. Manmohan Singh at the G20 Summit are extremely unnerving. That the Prime Minister of the country- being a prominent economist himself- should say that inflation is good as it [...]
Posted in Constitution, Court, Human Rights on Oct 14th, 2011
Does the massive case backlog in India merit a consolidation of sorts – an enforced rationing of the judicial system? What are the implications of making justice scarce, and how can they be tackled? These are questions that Gaurav Laroia (GWU alum, currently with an election monitoring team in Liberia) raises in his pilot post [...]
Posted in Constitution, Court on Sep 7th, 2011
The South African Constitutional Court, an institution par excellence, will have a new Chief in its not-so-distant future. Comparative Constitutions has already reported on President Zuma’s strange pick for the job – a man with a disappointing judicial record. Apparently, Mogoeng Mogeong, as a lower court judge commuted the punishment of a man who had [...]
Posted in Constitution, Court, Democracy, Human Rights on Jul 7th, 2011
(Update: A version of this piece with minor tweaks appears on the op-ed page of The Hindu dated July 9, 2011) In the seventies, the Supreme Court of India was called upon to decide the constitutionality of Excise Rules that allowed the State of Punjab to regulate the number of days, even hours, when liquor [...]