Book Reviews
Lectures On Procedural Laws (2023) By Aishwarya Pratap Singh, Lexis Nexis [Book Review]
The conflict and court marshal side by side and procedural law assumes the ‘role of lens of the law’ to magnify the litigation and judgment. The procedural laws sound full of magic because it conjures a world of its own and seeks to capture the ‘real’ world in its social legal milieu. Lectures on Procedural Laws by Aishwarya Pratap Singh capture the arte facts/craft of procedural laws in pragmatic fashion. It dexterously dwells on the intricacies and complexities with lucidity and clarity...
K G Kannabiran: The Practitioner of Insurgent Constitutionalism | Book Review Of 'The Speaking Constitution'
The character of the Indian state and politics has transformed drastically over the last few years. Mob lynchings, hate speech against minorities, criminalisation of dissent, weaponisation of extant laws against critics, and evisceration of civil liberties, among others, have largely come to constitute the everydayness of India. This transformation, notes Madhav Khosla and Milan Vaishnav in The Three Faces of The Indian State (2021), manifests "the ethnic state, the absolute state, and the...
Book Review ;Technology And Democracy: Toward A Critical Theory Of Digital Technologies, Technopolitics, And Technocapitalism
The technology did not just allow people to connect to their dear ones virtually; it was even the primary medium through which business was conducted- during and even after the pandemic. Teaching also relied heavily on technology during the pandemic, as human mobility was highly restricted. In short, the world experienced a digital transformation. From business to education to...
Review: Report on the working of Wildlife Protection Act, 1972 by Criminal Justice and Police Accountability Project
In September 2022, the Government of India brought a group of eight big cats/cheetahs from Namibia to Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh. Amidst the celebrations of this project, what went unnoticed was the displacement of Adivasis and other similarly marginalized communities from Bagcha village, surrounding the park. Due to this ambitious project, the Sahariya Adviasis (a...
Senior Advocate Arvind Datar's Review of The Book 'Soli Sorabjee: A Great Maestro' By Sudhish Pai
The recently released book Soli Sorabjee: A Great Maestro, by Senior Advocate Shri Sudhish Pai and published by Law & Justice Publishing Co, celebrates the life and contribution of Soli Sorabjee to the development of Indian jurisprudence. I had the good fortune of writing Nani Palkhivala: The Courtroom Genius with Sorabjee, which will be cherished forever. Mr. Pai has arranged...
Book Review: Prophets With Honor by Alan Barth
"There are some who think it desirable that dissents should not be disclosed as they detract from the force of the judgement. Undoubtedly, they do. When unanimity can be obtained without sacrifice of conviction, it strongly commends the decision to public confidence. But unanimity, which is merely formal, which is recorded at the expense of strong, conflicting views, is not desirable...
Book Review- The Proof: 'Uses of Evidence in Law, Politics, and Everything Else'
Evidence forms the ground for what we know, but at the same time, it is complex in nature not only in terms of the determination of its validity but also in terms of the degree of reliability in different contexts. The Proof by Frederick Schauer is one such book which analyses the various aspects of evidence in a detailed and innovative manner, not just from a legal perspective...
Book Review: How Gourango Lost His O
I have been reading articles of Mr. Sanjoy Ghose, Senior Advocate for a while. He usually packs legal developments in juicy anecdotes. Mr. Ram Guha, historian, is also anecdotal. But Mr. Ghose is different and does something more, he mocks without a pause. Himself first and all creatures involved in the affair, soon. I remember his one piece wherein he talked about 'rivalry' of...
Book Review: "The Power Of The Ballot: Travail And Triumph In The Elections" By Vipul Maheshwari & Anil Maheshwari
This book is through a spectacle of a Veteran Journalist and a Senior Supreme Court Lawyer, they begin their memoir by stating contradictions that occurred during the 2020 elections in India. Indians seem to be 'homoelectionus' in that they love to remain in election mode perennially, knowing well that elections are the bedrock of a democracy which India chose to be more than 75...
Book Announcement : "The Finished Article: Essays on Indian Designs Law"
The Finished Article: Essays on Indian Designs Law (Thomson Reuters, 2022, ISBN-13: 978-9393702173) is a recent book published by Eashan Ghosh, intellectual property lawyer. The book is available for purchase online at this link. This is his second book on Indian intellectual property law, following Imperfect Recollections: The Indian Supreme Court on Trade Mark Law (2020). The Finished...
Book Review : "Soli Sorabjee – Life and Times" By Abhinav Chandrachud
When Abhinav Chandrachud started chasing eminent jurist Mr.Soli Sorabjee, Senior Advocate and former Attorney General for India, to convince him to write latter's autobiography in 2018, he didn't know that he himself will have to write it in the form of a biography a few years later. Soli Sorabjee succumbed to Covid in on 30th April 2021 leaving behind his legacy and an...
Book Review: Arvind Narrain's 'Undeclared Emergency: Constitutionalism And The Politics Of Resistance'
Arvind Narrain's "Undeclared Emergency" is one of the pioneer books in capturing the legal and political dynamics of the Indian state in the process of ongoing transformation. It is both empirically fulfilling and analytically detailed. It traces the analogical similarity between the two phases of the Indian political epoch, namely, Indira Gandhi's Emergency era of 1975-77 and...