Articles by Sudhir Krishnaswamy

The debate on the design of the Lokpal has been premised on the questionable assumption that what is needed to combat corruption is a powerful national institution to prosecute and convict the corrupt, but the debate has not drawn on the experience with the existing institutional models, namely the Lokayuktas in the states. An empirical analysis of the performance of the Lokayukta in Karnataka between 1995 and 2011 suggests that any anti-corruption agency, no matter how powerful, that is oriented towards criminal conviction is bound to fail in the absence of judicial reforms.

Abhinav Chandrachud's study of the composition of the Supreme Court between 1980 and 2003 does not develop either an institutional sociology or a realist analysis of the Supreme Court as an institution.

The decision earlier this year of the Supreme Court in the case relating to reservations for the Other Backward Classes has generated substantial debate. Unfortunately, much of this debate has failed to subject the judgment to rigorous legal analysis. This paper attempts to fill the gap by first proposing a general methodology for a legal reading of a court judgment. It then provides a careful analysis of the A K Thakur judgment and shows that the ratio in the case is a narrow one with no radical departures from the Court's existing doctrine on reservation law and policy. The paper then assesses the Court's approach to the problems of identifying beneficiaries and suggests that the Court closely correlate the intrusiveness of affirmative action measures chosen and the moral justifications for the same. It concludes by addressing several policy proposals that aim to restructure affirmative action and suggest alternative frameworks of legal doctrine that will allow the Court to effectively respond to these demands for reform.