Should Rarest of Rare doctrine be abolished?

Recently, again an accused is awarded a death sentence by a Mumbai Sessions Court“for raping and killing the techie, under IPC Section 302 (murder), Section 376 (rape) and Section 201 (causing disappearance of evidence of offence)”; terming it as the ‘rarest of rare’ cases. I am unable to understand the exact application of what the ‘Rarest of Rare’doctrine is and how it is applied each time. The doctrine ‘Rarest of Rare’ was first articulated in 1980 in the Bachan Singh case. Then in 2008, the...

Child Labour (Prohibition & Regulation) Amendment Bill, 2012: A Critique

The International Labour Organization (ILO) states that child Labour is “a violation of fundamental human rights”, which impairs a child’s development, potentially leading to lifelong physical or psychological damage. The organization’s comprehensive reports (An economic study of the costs and benefits of eliminating child Labour (Geneva, IPEC, 2004), pp. 4-5) on the subject of child Labour and economics showed that eliminating child Labour could actually help developing economies generate...

The Fight for an Additional Supreme Court Bench

The Supreme Court on 13th July 2015, rejected a PIL application to open a branch of the apex court in Chennai. Although it said that the PIL indicated progressive thought, it said that it was not inclined to go into the matter in its judicial side, for setting up of the bench.The PIL petition, namely AM Krishna vs Union of India & Ors, claimed that an additional bench of the apex court should be set up in south, west and north-eastern parts of the country. The Supreme Court of India, located...

The Irony that is the Land Bill

Since it was approved in 2013, The Right to Transparency and Fair Compensation in Land Acquisition Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act (LARR) has drawn a lot of flak from farmers, who claim that apart from fairly compensating land losers, the act had threatened their livelihood by exempting irrigation projects and most importantly, had allowed land acquisition by private entities. On the other hand, the act raised further questions regarding the lengthy acquisition process and the delay caused...

Sec 66A- An exaggeration of your rights end where my nose begins

The number of social media users in urban India would reach 302 million by Dec 2014 registering a Y-o-Y growth of 32% last year, according to a report ‘Internet in India 2014’, jointly published by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IMAI) and IMRB International. According to this survey, for 93% of the respondents in urban India, the primary use of internet is Search, followed by Online Communication and Social Networking. With such an enormous rise in the social media-savvy...

A Law Student in The Stanford University Business School: From Lawyer to Entrepreneur

It is no secret today that law graduates are faced with a plethora of opportunities where their legal skills are used extensively. Working for companies and as entrepreneurs is one such area. People today go to law school with a business ambition. Combining law with other skills has always been in vogue: whether that be with MBA or CA or CS. The author of this piece describes her experience at Standford University Business School where she went during the beginning of the third year of law...

Top 100 Universities for Higher Studies in Law

The top 100 universities in the world for law, as ranked by higher education data specialists QS was released. Once again, like 2013, Harvard in the United States was ranked as the best University in terms of Academics. Oxford University, United Kingdom moved up a rank from 2013 and is now ranked the Second Best University for higher studies in Law. Cambridge University currently occupies the third rank. These are followed by Yale University and New York University.For employment opportunities...

Death Penalty – Is it ever Justified?

‘Every saint has a past and every sinner a future, never write off the man wearing the criminal attire but remove the dangerous degeneracy in him, restore his retarded human potential by holistic healing of his fevered, fatigued or frustrated inside and by repairing the repressive, though hidden, injustice of the social order which is vicariously guilty of the criminal behaviour of many innocent convicts. Law must rise with life and jurisprudence responds to humanism.’Krishna Iyer, J.Ever since...

Judicial Review of a ‘Bill’ under Article 32: A Constitutionally Impermissible Proposition

IntroductionAnxiety is fluctuating within the legal community in India as the Supreme Court of India (SC) will hear a batch of similar writ petitions that challenge the National Judicial Appointments Commission Bill, 2014 and the 121st Constitution Amendment Bill, 2014, today. This anxiety can be explained in two ways; by a political battle on one hand and by pure interpretation of law on the other. This article is only concerned about the latter.The Modi government had priorities. Circumstances...

GLC Mumbai - New Wine in a Resurrected Bottle

`GLC is a banquet, eat all you can!` This is the advice that a new entrant hears on entering the portals of this 160 year old relic. But it ain`t an ordinary banquet where there is free flowing sumptuous food- instead it is a paradigm that depends on the choices of each entrant: the choice to seat oneself at the banqueting table while enduring it`s partially restored and rickety condition and the choice of food while balancing the exquisite and limited resources and thirst for nourishment. At...

Abortion : Freedom or Violation of Rights?

As rightly expressed by Mark Rudolph MacGuigan,the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada in 1982,“Whether abortion is an expression of negative or positive conscience is a serious question with enormous consequence.”,  abortion is indeed a crucial matter. Abortion is the termination of pregnancy by the removal of the embryo or the foetus from the uterus, before viability, resulting in or caused by its death. An abortion most commonly refers to the induced methods of expulsion of the...

Rape in the Wedlock!!!

"When a woman is raped by a stranger, she has to live with a frightening memory. When she is raped by her husband, she has to live with the rapist" A Delhi trial court's recent decision acquitting a man of the charge of rape because the woman he had sex with forcibly happened to be his wife has once again brought this issue on rostrum. Section 376 of IPC provides punishment for rape. According to the section, the rapist should be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which...