The Supreme Court’s judgment, upholding the constitutional validity of the demonetisation of `500 and `1,000 notes, is legally right but comes too late to be of any appreciable legal interest. It highlights the phenomenon of the Court determining the outcome of a case without actually deciding the case, and raises worrying questions about the abdication of responsibility by the Court.
Apart from holding the Maratha reservations unconstitutional, the Supreme Court also interpreted the 102nd amendment to take away the power of state governments to designate communities as “socially and educationally backward classes.” This particular aspect of the Court’s judgment is poorly reasoned, goes contrary to the express provisions of the Constitution and threatens to upset well-set principles and practices in relation to reservations in India.
The Supreme Court’s constitution bench judgment striking down the Maharashtra government’s reservations for Marathas has affirmed and applied well-accepted tests laid down in the Indra Sawhney judgment. However, it has also missed an opportunity to re-examine the artificially imposed 50% limit on reservations in jobs and seats. The justification for retaining the same, however, could also affect reservations for the economically weaker sections.
Supreme Court of India: The Beginnings by George H Gadbois, Jr; edited and introduced by Vikram Raghavan and Vasujith Ram, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2017; pp xxxii + 245, ₹795.
The law punishing contempt of court leaves ample room for interpretation at the discretion of judges. Such discretion has the potential to be used to curb criticism of the judiciary.
The Competition Commission of India’s landmark order in the Hyundai case on resale price maintenance is analysed in light of the CCI’s broader decisional practice on RPM. It finds that, unlike in other cases, the CCI did not examine the possible benefits of RPM in increasing the sale of cars. In effect, the CCI presumed that the very existence of the discount control measure was unlawful, without the need to assess competitive effects. The Hyundai case is used to highlight the inconsistencies in the CCI’s decisional practice on RPM.
There is a tendency to view the threat to judicial independence in India as emerging from the executive branch, and occasionally the legislature. But when persons within the judiciary become pliable to the other branches, it is a different story altogether.
The recent Rohingya crisis in South Asia raised questions regarding the refugee policies of the Indian state, which seem to take a very diplomatic position on the refugee problem. This article seeks to argue that India’s kindness for some refugee communities and ignorant behaviour for Muslim refugees has raised a doubt on its way of refugee dealings, and has posed question on the very secular face of the Indian state. How the Supreme Court as well as the Indian government has viewed and handled the refugee problem has been discussed in detail in this article.
India’s legal doctrine of “collective conscience” cannot be traced back to the original concept as propagated by French sociologist Emile Durkheim. The consistency with which this concept has been used by the Indian judiciary while imposing the death sentence, compels us to contemplate how it has been applied. An attempt is made in this article to present the flaws in the concept of collective conscience and in its application in India.
