To all those who were debating about global impact being made by Indian scholars, University of London has just started a scholarship for refugee law studies in the name of Chimni to honour his work even during his lifetime. This is a mere example of the standard of one's international reputation that would merit the person being called to have had a global impact. Not simply being the faculty of ABC institution, or having YouTube videos or even the number of publications.

https://london.ac.uk/bs-chimni-scholarship

What is your definition of a globally renowned scholar, huh? His scholarship is widely recognized in the human rights circle and is cited in leading journals and speakers. He is consulted by top bodies working in human right including the UN and NHRC. Unless you come up with objective criteria, it is all whether you have heard of his work or not which doesn't cut it. He is a globally renowned academic it's just that I am not sure if you truly understand how academia works.

Yes, NLUJ is what it is today because of its good students. For that matter, all NLUs are good because they get the best students.
After 10 years or so the NLUs may churn out good researchers having global influence. For the present moment, Baxi, PK Tripathi, RP Anand, Chimni, Ved Nanda remain the best researchers/scholars who enjoyed recognition outside India and btw none of them studied in any NLU.

His brand of institution building was to tell everybody that if you are supposed to work for 8 hours a day, then you should try to work for 16 (I am actually quoting him). Sorry, but no. The institution that he built alone, NLUJ, is what it is today because of its good students, but their admin approach have always been dictatorial and problematic, and rarely concerned about student or staff welfare. He would have done well as a tier one Indian sweatshop managing partner though.

Why no one has mentioned the name of Prof. VED P NANDA here. Surprising!!!

"Prof. Ved P. Nanda" is a John Evans University Professor and Thompson G. Marsh Professor of Law at the Sturm College of Law, University of Denver and serves as Director of the International Legal Studies Program there. In 2006 Professor Nanda founded of the Nanda Center for International & Comparative Law in Denver. Prof Nanda is a global icon in the field of International Law and Jurisprudence.

-- Professor Nanda has authored or co-authored 25 books in the various fields of international law, over 225 chapters and major law review articles
-- He was awarded "Padma Bhushan" in 2018.

I don't want to say anything here about a great teacher but you should closer look at the publications. There's a co-edited book, two descriptive pieces. Many people influence law but are not scholars. A globally recognised scholar rigorously develops ideas in their writing. Shwetha Balakrishnan's work shows us that there was a generation of women for whom the Indian law firm ended up becoming a feminist space, because of the circumstances that came together. Baxi among other many things showed us how the Indian Supreme Court uses obiter. Tarunabh Khaitan put forward a new way to think about equality theory.

You can check them here - https://scholar.google.co.in/citations?hl=en&user=rOe4Rp8AAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate

6 new pieces in 2020.

She has with a doubt in my mind shaped the conversations in the field of disability law in the Indian context. She was an early non-sarkaari participant in the creation of the UN CRPD. Therefore, one could make a plausible claim about her having been part of the group that has defined modern law viz. people with disability.

Not an active academic anymore but C. Raj Kumar from JGLS already fits the criteria of being an academic with considerable impact on legal scholarship. While JGLS in itself despite its drawbacks is a commendable feat on part of Kumar that is more a result of his administrative abilities.
As an academic however Kumar is once again class apart. He has had books and article publications with top exclusive publishers. He has drawn grants of millions of rupees for various studies he has undertaken. And, the holy grail of all, his work has been cited on multiple occasions in Harvard Law Review, Cornell International Law Journal, Yale Journal of International Law etc.
To be an academic of repute not only you need to get published in top places, but your work is validated when top researchers start citing your work in these places, and on that criteria, Kumar is way ahead of the majority of the folks being discussed here despite not being very active as an academic for almost a decade now.
If you still have doubts about Kumar's scholarship take note that Kumar's work is part of the reading material at several top places including Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs,
USA and Rhodes College, USA. He has been on multiple occasion been consulted by United Nations on issues dealing with human rights (Kumar's expertise) and is an editor/referee for several top-notch journals.
If you have issues with me adding Kumar here, I am happy to have a healthy debate in comments but I would not entertain trolls.

Bhatia has his merits though. Provides good commentary on the quotidian, and helps students (and lawyers, if interested) appreciate Baxi and higher scholars. Liberalizing access to denser scholarship is almost as important as the latter. Similar is the case with Faizan - old school commentary that could fit the Doordarshan rostrum if they were slightly more adventurous. To each his own. Tarunabh - excellent all the way through.

Bhatia and Faizan are perfect examples of how being visible in MSM and social media leads people to get more attention. What I mean is this: more people have read him than Baxi/MP Singh/ Tarunabh, while MSM quotes him and not such scholars. Karan Thapar interviews Faizan but not them.

Lol, influential? Whether you are referring to academic power, or effecting policies via their scholarship, these people are nowhere even close to most of the senior legal academics in India from TLC background. I'm not saying that they aren't good, just that their age or the Indian academic environment has not really brought forth that change yet. Sudhir himself needed a godfather like MPS to even make to the VC position of a small law university.

And you’d be a fool for it. Most senior academics and Lawrence’s contemporaries did not think his work was rigorous enough even so far back as five - ten years ago. No one cares about the dumb Infosys prize. It’s one thing to speak well and command a room and write about things young people care about. It’s another thing to come up with novel original analysis. All Lawrence [follow] western lawyers on copy left and while the advocacy was important and had its place- let’s not confuse that with original scholarship.

None of what you said about him amounts to influencing global scholarship. The Infosys prize in India is awarded by jury primarily from or influenced by people here, and KC Basu lecture is hosted by an NLU. Stop idolising people prematurely. And maybe your mutual friend-circle calls him Saviour of the South too, that doesn't really make a difference. He has not produced any original global scholarship that has made any significant impact. His atrocious personal activities have got nothing to do with why he is not being named here.

I would place Lawrence Liang at #3, right after Baxi and Chimni and jointly tied with Tarunabh. He has been awarded the Infosys Prize. Unlike Shamnad, who basically won the prize for community service through IDIA, Lawrence won it mainly for his intellectual contribution in pioneering the CopyLeft movement. That itself makes him stand above the rest. Lawrence was also invited by Kaushik Basu to give the KC Basu Lecture, joining two Nobel laureates (Sen and Stiglitz) and many other global intellectuals. He has also been cited by the courts. In IP circles, he is often called "Lawrence of the South" (Lawrence of the North being the famous Harvard copyright professor Lawrence Lessig).

Some people have not named Lawrence because of certain issues not concerning his academic life, but we must strictly confine this thread to academics and intellectual contribution.

This post was about Indians who have made global impact with their legal scholarship. Kinda difficult to identify them until you are able to understand what making global impact means. It is not enough to have 10 publications or become the faculty of a university, visiting or full-time.

Trying to compare someone yet to publish in an A-list journal, yet to publish a book with top-notch publisher, and yet to have a PhD with people like Tarunabh, Lavanya, Shweta B etc? I also could not find a single link from UCLA which lists him as a "visiting professor". I did see a link from UCI (which is a different law school) which lists him and giving a 1 hour lecture and giving students credit for attending it. That is not the same as being a "visiting professor". As for the NYU thing, it is not enough to place him in that league. By that account, there are many other young profs at Jindal with more prestigious fellowships: Mohsin Bhatt, Shivprasad Swaminathan, Jhuma Sen, Saloni Khanderia etc etc.

Professor Bose became the first Indian to be chosen by the American Bar Association and NYU Law School as a "Next Generation Antitrust Scholar”. He is also a visiting professor at UCLA. And I thought this post was about Indians, those people certainly don’t sound like Indians?

Y’all have to get pissed at literally anything right?

"It is in this vein that H.M. Seervai ends the third volume of his celebrated treatise on the constitutional law of India. Indian law scholars would be more than justified if they altogether ignored all that Seervai has to say. For, Seervai writes and thinks as if there is no worthwhile writing by Indian scholars on the subject of constitutional and administrative law. He also totally ignores reasoned scholarly criticism of his positions and thereby shows that he considers it beneath his dignity to join issues with academic lawyers. Seervai compounds this affront to Indian scholarship by his unmitigated Anglophilism. He has no hesitation in citing the less eminent and more obscure British and American scholars. It is only in India that a person so insular in his approach to indigenous juristic learning and thought can be called a "jurist" and his work hailed as "classic""

Wow Baxi really hates the man being called an academic

Arun Thiruvengadam could be like them in a few years. He’s published very widely and his articles are good. Jayanth Krishnan as well. Sudhir has not published much off late- but he was on track to be this sort of academic a while ago. He wrote widely about all sorts of issues and he wrote well. He still does some policy work that could count as having international impact. There is Tarunabh Khaitan of course.

Other folks who could possibly achieve the same level of fame would be Namita Wahi for her property law work, Anup Surendranath, maybe even Mrinal/ Aparna. Rohit De has a good book out, so does Madhav Khosla and Abhinav Chandrachud and Shubhankar Dam and Shwethaa Ballakrishnen. It’s just too early to tell with all of these folks.

There are also folks who are made much off but I don’t really find their work all that interesting/ rigorous- Bhatia/ atrey/ Chinmayee Arun/ Mohsin Alam etc. and folks who don’t really receive their due as scholars, shrimoyee ghosh, Nayanika Mathur etc.

The problem is that this is all mostly conjecture and it is hard to pick the next great Indian scholar. Any number of the younger scholars mentioned here might make it big.
But it could just as easily be someone no one has heard of until now.

For my money Suraj Yengde has a bunch of these guys beat, but I doubt he has the socio-political capital to be recognised for his academic contributions. He does speak to truth to power though and I hope he gets the recognition.

I would also guard against idolising baxi and chimni and others too much. They had their moment in the sun, but their apparent superiority might just be because of their age- and over time most of the scholars today could have done more impactful work. Even among their contemporaries I can think of several scholars who influenced my own thinking a lot more. Academia isn’t this race to the top at all - neither is research- it’s about working collaboratively and even if you can only tell the story of a small part of the world- a niche area of the law- that’s fine as long as it is the truth.

[...]
It's a disservice that you exclude others from NUJS like Shubhankar@Portsmouth and Saptashi@Osgoode and choose him. If you must choose a commercial law person, I suggest Navajyoti Samanta@Sheffield.

You know the people who have actually made an international impact on Antitrust Law? People like Mark Lemley, Hovenkamp, Carrier, and Danny Crane. No Indian scholar has till date even caused any sizable ripple in that field. Bose may be a very good academic indeed, but have some idea first about the greatest people in a field and their stature before comparing others with them.

CHHATRAPATI SINGH AND THE IDEA OF A LEGAL THEORY
Upendra Baxi

This paper seeks to restore the critical importance of Chhatrapti Singh's (CS) jurisprudential significance; it focuses primarily on his work Anarchy, and Utopia, The paper critically evaluates CS thought, developing a distinction between CS-I (the legal philosopher) and CS-II (the activist citizen). Following the philosopher Leibniz, CS insists that each one of us has a normative obligation to create a Utopia (best possible normative world) developing further the thought that legal philosophy is the 'first philosophy'. The Utopia that we have an obligation to develop is that of a 'universalized Dharma'; the article examines ways in which law takes us back to dharma and dharma back to modern law. In a Kantian vein, CS insists on the regulative idea of moral progress; '...continuity in moral progress must not only be in knowledge but also in being a person'. Each individual finite self, says CS, here quoting and endorsing Kant, is a vessel and vehicle of 'infinite progress' and thus refers us to also to 'the presupposition of an infinitely enduring existence and personality of the same rational being... called the immortality of soul'. CS insists that Kant then needs to accept 'the possibility of rational will becoming a holy will as ontologically true and not just as epistemological truth' and further that the 'idea of law demands this'. CS-I failure to give due right to the ethics of Marx is as telling as his innovation of Rudolf Stammler's notion to 'right law' is summoning. Obviously, more work is needed on CS; and this paper in an invitation to do so.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/43953686

Precisely. Seervai has limitations, he is concerned about courts, law and their development. Baxi puts all of this into a bucket-ed context. Sure, judges in Australia revere Seervai's work, as do I, but Baxi is not here to give a commentary. You become multitudes richer after reading Baxi on law. Also appreciate how Baxi was so inclined about issues like legal education.

Prof Anuj Bhawania is the author of Courting the People: Public Interest Litigation in Post-Emergency India published by Cambridge University Press in 2017 among others. He has taught at South Asian University.

Articles:
“The case that felled a city: Examining the politics of Public Interest Litigation through one case,” SAMAJ: South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal, 2018, Issue 17
“Public Interest Litigation as a Slum Demolition Machine,” Projections: MIT Journal of Planning 12 (2016): 67-97.
“Courting the people: The rise of Public Interest Litigation in post-emergency India,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 2014, Volume 34, No. 2: 314-335
“Black Friday: Mediation and the Impossibility of Justice,” Centre for the Study of Law and Governance Working Paper Series, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, 2012
“‘Very Wicked Children’: ‘Indian torture’ and the Madras Torture Commission Report of 1855”, Sur: International Journal on Human Rights, June 2009, Issue 10: 7-26.
“The ‘law’ of the police,” The Sarai Reader: The Frontier, 2008: 134-143.
Book reviews and non-academic publications
“P.N. Bhagwati’s legacy: A controversial inheritence,” The Hindu, 27 June 2017.
“The Making of a Legislative Court,” The Hindu, 3 December 2016.
“Why hasn’t caste disappeared yet?” Books and Ideas, June 2, 2016, http://www.booksandideas.net/Why-Hasn-t-Caste-Disappeared-Yet.html (A review of Surinder Jodhka, Caste in Contemporary India, Routledge, 2015.)
“Media and the Accused,” Indian Express, 12 March 2015, New Delhi•
Book review of 'Punjab: A History from Aurangzeb to Mountbatten' by Rajmohan Gandhi. Sunday Guardian, 1st Feb 2014
“An excuse for arbitrary rule,” New Indian Express, 31 December, 2008. (About the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Amendment Act, 2008)
“The Pool of Talent,” Tehelka, Vol. 5, Issue 39, Dated Oct 04, 2008.
“Pulling in the wrong direction,” Time Out Delhi, Vol. 1, Issue 7, July 13-26, 2007. (About the ban on cycle-rickshaws on the orders of Delhi High Court)
“Half-baked Idea,” Time Out Delhi, Vol. 1, Issue 2, April 20-May 3, 2007. (About the ban on selling of cooked food by street vendors, on the orders of the Supreme Court)
“The State’s Emissary,” Biblio, September-October, 2005, Vol. X, Nos. 9 & 10, p. 32. (A review of SARAI Reader 5: Bare Acts, an edited volume of interdisciplinary writings on law)

Prof Avirup Bose

Books

1) The Theory and Practice of Indian Competition Law (in contract with Thomson Reuters, forthcoming 2015).
2) A Handbook on the Law of GM Food (LexisNexis-India, 2005).

Book-chapter

1) Rating India’s antitrust enforcement in CUTS Centre for Competition, Investment & Economic Regulation ed., India Competition and Regulation Report (ICRR) (forthcoming 2015).

Articles

1) State of Indian Merger Control – lessons from CCI’s Sun-Ranbaxy and Holcim-Lafarge approval orders; Concurrences Journal, Institute of Competition Law (forthcoming, June 2015).
2) Now we’re motoring (Tackling the antitrust problems of the Indian automobile aftermarket); Competition Law Insight (December, 2014).
3) A review is needed: India’s antitrust regulator should scrutinize the Facebook/WhatsApp merger; Competition Law Insight (July, 2014).
4) Lessons to be learned from India’s latest high profile merger review: the Jet-Etihad deal; European Competition Law Review (March 2014).
5) Competitive neutrality under Indian competition law: an analysis of the Coal India decision; Lex Witness (February 2014).
6) Flying into trouble? (A spanner thrown into the works of the Jet-Etihad deal could have wide repercussions for M&A in India); India Business Law Journal (February 2014).
7) Corporate Communications and Competition Law: Do not speak more than you can handle, Competition Law Reports B: 214-230 (September 2013).
8) Insignificant Local Nexus and Indian Merger Control, Competition Law Insight, (July 2013).
Circumstantial Evidence and Dawn Raids: a new era of antitrust investigation in India a new era; Competition Law Reports B: 61-71 (April 2013).
9) The Buck Stops Here (Individuals at the helm of companies in India may be held personally liable in case of violations of competition law rules); India Business Law Journal 25-28 (September 2012).
10) Playing by the Rules (Companies should implement compliance programmes to ensure they don’t fall foul of India’s increasingly stringent competition law); India Business Law Journal 31-34 (July-August 2012).
(With Delano Furtado et al., )
11) To Notify or Not to Notify? (An explanation of how the ambiguities in the Merger Regulations have created uncertainties about exemptions to the pre-merger notification process); India Business Law Journal 20-21 (June 2011).

Op-eds

1) A ‘chota-recharge’ model for the internet (with Payal Malik), Financial Express (May 1, 2015).
Leave the Internet Alone (advocating a middle path for India’s net neutrality debate) (with Payal Malik), Mint (April 22, 2015).
2) The fuss over spectrum auctions (with Payal Malik), Mint (April 1, 2015).
3) Charting the course for economic federalism, Financial Express (March 4, 2015).
Market Competition as a poll plank, Financial Express (January 22, 2015).
4) CCI’s Sun-Ranbaxy Masterstroke (describing the key takeaways from CCI’s first detailed (Phase II) merger review), Financial Express (December 22, 2014).
5) A case for ‘consumer unfriendly’ brands (antitrust implications for the Indian online retail industry), Business Standard (November 26, 2014).
6) The dawn-raiders are coming!, Business Standard (October 2, 2014).
7) CCI spares a thought for car owners, Business Standard (September 1, 2014).
8) Strong competition as a reform (India’s electricity markets show how reforms on their own can’t do much unless backed by strong institutions) (with Payal Malik), Mint (August 24, 2014).
9) Too many regulators cause a regulatory deficit, Business Standard (August 18, 2014).
10) so many regulators (a governance reform agenda for the new Modi Government: eliminating regulatory chaos) (with Payal Malik), Indian Express (July 30, 2014).
Competition policy crucial for Narendra Modi’s 3S mantra (with Dhanendra Kumar), Financial Express (July 3, 2014).
11) A touch of class for competition laws (Competition law class actions may become a reality this summer; heralding a U.S.-style class action culture in India), Business Standard (June 17, 2014).
12) CCI’s realty test (in a consumer friendly move COMPAT upholds CCI’s DLF decision – but what about the others?) (with Dhanendra Kumar), Financial Express (June 7, 2014).
13) High five for India’s competition law regime, Business Standard (May 26, 2014).
14) CCI shifts focus from ‘legal form’ to ‘business rationale’, Business Standard (April 28, 2014).
15) CCI’s fine on Google – Why other firms should not feel ‘lucky’; Business Standard (April 15, 2014).
16) Competition law violations get personal: Directors and senior officers could be now fined for the anti-17) competitive conduct of their companies; Business Standard (March 25, 2014).
18) Why India’s antitrust body should scrutinise the WhatsApp buy; Business Standard (March 3, 2014).

There’s more but unfortunately there’s a character limit on LI

Late Chhatrapati Singh was a good researcher at ILI working on Environment related project. Due to his Philosophy background, he could not thrash out the legal issues with clarity. That is why his work "Law From Anarchy to Utopia" did not evoke good responses from the Academia. Tributes to him, a thorough gentleman. 

Very few people mentioned here have ever made proper international impact. It's somewhat amusing to see the provincial mindset reflected by the comments. If academics in the same field at least in more than one country haven't heard of you or read your work, then regardless of your quality, you have hardly made 'international impact'. Barring Baxi and Chimni, nobody else mentioned here has reached that level. MP Singh is somewhat well-known in Germany at best outside India. The others aren't even anywhere close. The younger names mentioned here don't even come close.

Spot on. It's really sad to see some of the names been given here. It shows people don't read enough and don't have a clue. Some are just blindly naming their own teachers! Writing a book and summarising a bunch of cases or teaching well does not equate to being a scholar with international impact. That depends on original theories advanced by you and cited by others, typically in journal articles.

Do testicles get extra points or something? How is Subhankar Dam more impactful that Srividya Raghavan or Swethaa Balakrishnan, or the amazing Lavanya Rajamani who doesn't even make your list. Not to mention Shreya Atrey who is on the Oxford faculty but apparently doesn't merit a mention.

RP Anand is very good call. May I throw in Chhatrapati Singh's name in the ring. He died way too young to really rise up to the levels set by Baxi, but his work on Commons and Poverty as well as his philosophical text titled 'From Anarchy to Utopia' are absolutely amazing reads.

Ramachandra Guha, though not a law person, has definitely shaped conversations on questions of environmental justice.

[...] If you had to name an NUJS alum, you should have named Shubhankar Dam. Dam is nowhere near Baxi or Chimni today, but could get there when he reaches their age. There are are also a few other NUJS alumni with good publications, but in niche fields, which limits their recognition.