Articles
Francis Bacon: Less Cited Story Of The First Queen’s Counsel
The petition on senior designations heard by the bench of Justice Ranjan Gogoi, Justice Rohington Nariman and Justice Navin Sinha has evoked a new found interest in the legendary lawyer and philosopher, Sir Francis Bacon. Bacon was the first to be given a patent which conferred upon him the designation as Queen’s Counsel Extraordinaire in 1597 which gave him precedence at the Bar.Three centuries later, the near monopoly of Bacon, gave way to the demands of an egalitarian democratic Great...
Grand Jury Indictments
The system of grand jury has once again come alive in USA with the appointment of Robert Muller, Special Counsel to investigate into the accusation of Russia’s interference in the US Presidential Election of Donald Trump. A grand jury in USA is essentially a legal body, usually composed of 16 to 23 citizens, which is empowered to conduct official proceedings and investigate potential criminal conduct of an accused and determine whether criminal charges should be brought against the alleged...
The Supreme Court’s Right to Privacy Judgment -III: Privacy, Surveillance, and the Body
In the previous two essays, I discussed the conceptual foundations of the right to privacy judgment, as well as the theoretical underpinnings of privacy endorsed by the Court. in the next three essays, I shall consider the three aspects that the judgments identify at the heart of the concept of privacy: the body, personal information, and decisional autonomy.First, the body. As Justices Sachs and O’Regan of the South African Constitutional Court observed, the “inviolability and worth of the...
Shrinking Transparency: Why? An Open Letter To MoS. Dr Jitendra Singh By Commodore Lokesh Batra
02 September 2017For: Dr Jitendra Singh, Hon’ble MoS (PMO & PP),Cc: Shri Ajay Mittal, Secretary (P),Sub : Shrinking Transparency: Why? Respected Hon’ble Minister,Greetings, 1. Sir, today it is exactly one year since Government invited applications for the “Appointment of two Information Commissioners (ICs)” in the ‘Central Information Commission (CIC)’, vide DoPT reference(s) F.No.4/3/2016-IR dated 02.09.2016, as two of the ICs were due to complete their tenure on 31.12.2016 and...
Be The Change You Want To See In The World
On 11.08.2017 the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India while hearing a case[1]expressed that Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 (for brevity, 'the 2016 Act') is a legislation of great welfare measures and it is the duty of everyone to see that the provisions are carried out with quite promptitude. The said case is in relation to a student, who is seeking admission to medical stream and she has pleaded in her petition to the Supreme Court that she falls under the category of persons with...
Aren’t Rivers Juristic, Legal Persons And Living Entities?
On 7 July, 2017 Supreme Court stayed the final judgment passed by the Nainital Bench of Uttarakhand High Court in Mohd. Salim v State of Uttarakhand dated 20 March, 2017 that gave recognition to the “legal status as a living person/legal entity to Rivers Ganga and Yamuna r/w Articles 48-A[1] and 51A (g)[2] of the Constitution of India".[3] The order came upon hearing the Special Leave Petition of State of Uttarakhand against the verdict. The one sentence order reads: “In the meantime, the...
Right to Privacy Judgment – II: Privacy, The Individual, And The Public/Private Divide
Privacy presupposes the existence of a private realm. The struggle for privacy has been, among other things, a struggle between rival understandings of how to define the private realm. In the early judgments of the United States Supreme Court, privacy was understood as a spatial concept, summed up in the old aphorism, “a man’s house is his castle.” Gradually, that concept evolved to include relationships and institutions such as marriage and the family: for example, the US Supreme Court struck...
Criminal Justice System on Trial
A frustrated judge in an English (adversarial) court finally asked a barrister after witnesses had produced conflicting accounts, 'Am I never to hear the truth?' 'No, my lord, merely the evidence', replied counsel. Peter Murphy’s illustration about adversarial justice delivery system is cent-percent true when we discuss about Indian justice delivery system. The ongoing uproar on conviction of Baba Ram Rahim is the result of 15 years long trial by a specialized court that are meant to be...
Triple Talaq and the Irrelevance of Religious Freedom
During last week, the Indian Supreme Court made two landmark decisions that were widely appreciated among civil rights activists. In one of the decisions, the Supreme Court invalidated the triple talaq (i.e. the instant divorce of a Muslim husband of his wife by uttering the words “talaq”). The discussion concerning the triple talaq focused heavily on religious freedom and its limits. The debate around the triple talaq was phrased in almost a cliché version of the religious freedom vs. liberal...
Who Is a “Police Officer” To Whom A Confession By An Accused Is Tabooed ?
Has anyone come across a police officer unknowingly becoming a non-police officer and vice versa ? Well, if the Legislature and the Judiciary so ordain, such a magical transformation can take place.In order to fully comprehend the above forensic legerdemain,it may be necessary to examine a few legal provisions. They are Sections 25 to 27 of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872 (“Evidence Act” for short) and Sections 161 and 162 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 (“Cr.P.C” for short). Those...
Understanding the ‘Elitist’ Argument against the Fundamental Right to Privacy
The unanimous Right to Privacy judgment of the nine judges’ bench of the Supreme Court delivered on 24th August, 2017 has been widely heralded as the dawn of a new era in the constitutional jurisprudence of India. It has now been dissected in the several articles published in the newspapers and news web portals in great detail. The judgment is very significant because a very important negative fundamental right primarily stemming from the fundamental right to life and personal liberty provided...
The Supreme Court’s Right to Privacy Judgment – I: Foundations By Gautam Bhatia
On the 24th of August, a nine-judge bench of the Supreme Court delivered its verdict in Justice K.S. Puttaswamy vs Union of India, unanimously affirming that the right to privacy is a fundamental right under the Indian Constitution. The verdict brought to an end a constitutional battle that had begun almost exactly two years ago, on August 11, 2015, when the Attorney-General for India had stood up during the challenge to the Aadhaar Scheme, and declared that the Constitution did not guarantee...