Previously on this blog, we have discussed the judgment of the Supreme Court in Venkataramana Devaru (constitutional validity of temple-entry legislation), and the dissenting opinion of Chief Justice Sinha in Sardar Saifuddin (constitutional validity of prohibiting excommunication). What unites these two opinions is not...

(In this guest post, Tejas Popat analyses the recent Supreme Court decision on the suspension of Tamil Nadu assembly lawmakers (discussed in the previous post), from the perspective of the freedom of occupation)—Justice Chelameswar authored the judgment in the case of Alagaapuram...

(In this Guest Post, Rahul Bajaj, a fourth-year law student at the University of Nagpur, examines a recent Supreme Court judgment – Algaapural R. Mohanraj v TN Legislative Assembly – on parliamentary privileges and constitutional freedoms. This is the first of two guest posts...

(In this second and concluding post, Abhinav Sekhri, a Delhi-based criminal lawyer, discusses the application of Article 20(3) to persons “accused of an offence”)—RecapPreviously, we talked about how the words ‘person accused of an offence’ present in Article 20(3) of the Constitution...

(In a two-part series, Abhinav Sekhri, a criminal lawyer, explores some of the problematic issues with the operation of the constitutional right against self-incrimination)—Article 20(3) of the Constitution of India is extremely fascinating. Tersely worded, it can be quoted in full:...

(In this guest post, Aratrika Choudhuri, a student at the National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata, discusses the recent discussion of the Pakistani Supreme Court on the basic structure doctrine)—The Supreme Court of Pakistan (“SCP”), by an overwhelming majority of...

     The Indian Constitution’s religious freedom clauses (Articles 25 and 26) constitute an extremely complex web of relationships between individual, community and State. To navigate this web, the Courts have developed two broad doctrinal tools: a distinction between the religious...

January 26, 2016 · 12:25 pm The Centre for Law and Policy Research has developed a website for searching the Constituent Assembly Debates. So far, researchers have been using Vivek Srinivasan’s fantastic search engine for our research, which has been...

Priya Ravinchandran has started a new blog called Women Architects of the Indian Republic, which aims to document the contributions of women members of the Indian Constituent Assembly, to the Debates and the Framing. It promises to be a fascinating enterprise. First...

(In this guest post, Vikram Hegde, a Delhi-based Supreme Court lawyer, discusses how Section 66A of the IT Act, which was struck down by the Supreme Court in Shreya Singhal’s Case, nonetheless continues to exist insofar as non-citizens are concerned)—For those who...

(Previously on this blog, we have looked at the intersection between the Constitution, and criminal procedure. In this guest post, Abhinav Sekhri examines how the Official Secrets Act is constitutionally suspect by enabling the possibility of retrospective creation of offences. The post...

January 17, 2016 · 4:59 am Tomorrow, the Supreme Court will hear final arguments on the question of whether women between the ages of 10 and 50 can be excluded from the Sabrimala shrine – an issue that has gained...

On July 1, 1983, Justice P.A. Choudary of the Andhra Pradesh High Court struck down Section 9 of the Hindu Marriage Act, which allowed the Court to pass an order for ‘restitution of conjugal rights.’ In simple language, if the Court was...

(This is a guest post by Karan Lahiri and Vrinda Bhandari. A condensed version of this piece appeared previously on Scroll.)As a bleak year drew to a close, the Supreme Court delivered another distinctly underwhelming judgment, in The Kerala Bar Hotels...

January 10, 2016 · 4:03 pm The Dawoodi Bohra case, which we discussed in the last essay, has been taken off the supplementary list for tomorrow. Hopefully, it will not take eleven years for it to be listed a second...