Taking the Constitution Away from the Supreme Court of India - Dr Amal Sethi
Location:
Virtual Event - Zoom
Date/time
Wed 19 May 2021
14:00-16:00
The Edinburgh Centre for Constitutional Law presents
Taking the Constitution Away from the Supreme Court of India
Speaker: Dr Amal Sethi, Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania and The Legal Priorities Project
Discussants: Professor Erin Delaney, Professor of Law at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law and Professor Anuj Bhuwania, Professor at Jindal Global Law School, Sonipat, India
Description:
In very few countries worldwide, is constitutionalism confined to the apex court’s courtrooms, the way it is in India. This facet of Indian political life has been taken so much for granted that rarely have people stopped to examine whether it is even desirable. This article will argue that on a closer examination, the Supreme Court is an inefficient forum to realise the Constitution’s promises and more so in today’s political climate. On the contrary, India’s Supreme Court centric constitutionalism raises more challenges than it resolves. This article will suggest that there is an urgent need to usher in a revolution of popular constitutionalism wherein the battles regarding the Constitution are predominately fought outside the Supreme Court rather than within. While such arguments have been made in the Anglo-American context, seldom have scholars advocated for popular constitutionalism in global south countries like India, where courts are considered vital for constitutional sustenance. In departing from this trend, this article will demonstrate how although the Supreme Court might still have a crucial role to play, ‘Taking The Constitution Away From the Supreme Court’ is indispensable.
Biographies:
Dr Amal Sethi is currently a Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania and The Legal Priorities Project. His research focuses on comparative constitutional and public law with an emphasis on courts, constitutions, and democracy. Amal holds a Doctor and Master of Laws from the University of Pennsylvania Law School. During his time at Penn, Amal has served as a Legal Writing Fellow, a Global Women Leadership Fellow, and a Salzburg Cutler Fellow. Outside of his academic work, Amal has been involved both with governmental agencies such as the United States Department of Commerce and USAID and intergovernmental agencies such as UN Women, SDG Fund, UNOHCHR, and UNDP.
Erin Delaney is Professor of Law at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law and has an affiliated faculty position in Northwestern’s Department of Political Science. Her scholarship explores constitutional design in comparative perspective, focusing on judicial review, judicial design, and federalism. She is a member of the Edinburgh Centre for Constitutional Law and the Keith Forum.
Anuj Bhuwania is a Professor at Jindal Global Law School in Sonipat, India. He is currently a Senior Fellow at the M.S. Merian – R. Tagore International Centre of Advanced Studies ‘Metamorphoses of the Political’ (ICAS:MP) in Delhi. He will be a Smuts Visiting Research Fellow at Clare Hall in the University of Cambridge from July 2021, if the Covid-19 situation in India lets him. He is the author of ‘Courting the People: Public Interest Litigation in Post-Emergency India’ (Cambridge University Press 2017).