Law and Identity in Colonial South Asia
Law and Identity in Colonial South Asia

Author: Mitra Sharafi

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2014-04-21

Total Pages: 369

ISBN-13: 1107047978

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This book explores the legal culture of the Parsis, or Zoroastrians, an ethnoreligious community unusually invested in the colonial legal system of British India and Burma. Rather than trying to maintain collective autonomy and integrity by avoiding interaction with the state, the Parsis sank deep into the colonial legal system itself. From the late eighteenth century until India's independence in 1947, they became heavy users of colonial law, acting as lawyers, judges, litigants, lobbyists, and legislators. They de-Anglicized the law that governed them and enshrined in law their own distinctive models of the family and community by two routes: frequent intra-group litigation often managed by Parsi legal professionals in the areas of marriage, inheritance, religious trusts, and libel, and the creation of legislation that would become Parsi personal law. Other South Asian communities also turned to law, but none seems to have done so earlier or in more pronounced ways than the Parsis.

The Nature of the Judicial Process
The Nature of the Judicial Process

Author: Benjamin Nathan Cardozo

Publisher:

Published: 1921

Total Pages: 218

ISBN-13:

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In this famous treatise, a Supreme Court Justice describes the conscious and unconscious processes by which a judge decides a case. He discusses the sources of information to which he appeals for guidance and analyzes the contribution that considerations of precedent, logical consistency, custom, social welfare, and standards of justice and morals have in shaping his decisions.

Environmental Jurisprudence in India
Environmental Jurisprudence in India

Author: C.M. Abraham

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2023-12-11

Total Pages: 191

ISBN-13: 9004635432

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Within the last two decades, India has not only enacted specific legislation on environmental protection but has also virtually created a new fundamental right to a clean environment in the Constitution. The models and methods adopted in the Indian context appear, at first sight, similar to those in other common law systems. Yet there are many subtle differences which have changed the structure and content of legal development in India. Indian environmental jurisprudence brings out the unique characteristics of a new legal order which has gradually been established in India. The distinguishing nature of this jurisprudence, as this book shows in detail, has three interconnected elements. First, the nature of the new Indian constitutional law regime accords greater importance to public concerns than protecting private interests. Secondly, this jurisprudential development reflects certain aspects of Indian legal culture, through implicit and explicit reliance on autochthonous values and concepts of law, encapsulated in the Indian juristic postulate of dharma. Thirdly, the emerging Indian environmental jurisprudence bears testimony to the activist role of the Indian judiciary which has also had a significant impact in many areas other than environmental law. In short, the development of environmental jurisprudence in India manifests neo-dharmic jurisprudence in postmodern public law. It accommodates ideas currently voiced by experts around the world for protecting the environment in forms modified by the Indian legal culture.

The Law of Emergency Powers
The Law of Emergency Powers

Author: Abhishek Singhvi

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2020-10-30

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 9811529973

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This book presents a comprehensive legal and constitutional study of emergency powers from a comparative common law perspective. It is one of very few comparative studies on three jurisdictions and arguably the first one to explore in detail various emergency powers, statutory and common law, constitutional and statutory law, martial law and military acting-in-aid of civil authority, wartime and peacetime invocations, and several related and vital themes like judicial review of emergency powers (existence, scope and degree). The three jurisdictions compared here are: the pure implied common law model (employed by the UK), implied constitutional model (employed by the USA) and the explicit constitutional model (employed by India). The book’s content has important implications, as these three jurisdictions collectively cover the largest population within the common law world, and also provide maximum representative diversity. The book covers the various positions on external emergencies as opposed to internal emergencies, economic/financial emergencies, and emergent inroads being made into state autonomy by the central or federal governments, through use of powers like Article 356 of the Indian Constitution. By providing a detailed examination of the law and practice of emergency powers, the book shares a wealth of valuable insights. Specific sub-chapters address questions like – what is the true meaning of ‘martial law’; who can invoke ‘martial law’; when can it be invoked and suspended; what happens when the military is called in to aid civilian authorities; can martial law be deemed to exist or coexist when this happens; what are the limits on state powers when an economic emergency is declared; and, above all, can, and if so, when and how should courts judicially review emergency powers? These and several other questions are asked and answered in this study. Though several checks and constraints have been devised regarding the scope and extent of ‘emergency powers,’ these powers are still prone to misuse, as all vast powers are. A study of the legal propositions on this subject, especially from a comparative perspective, is valuable for any body politic that aspires to practice democracy, while also allowing constitutionally controlled aberrations to protect that democracy.

Worshipping False Gods
Worshipping False Gods

Author: Arun Shourie

Publisher: HarperCollins

Published: 2012-07-27

Total Pages: 411

ISBN-13: 9350295393

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Over the last couple of decades, B.R. Ambedkar has come to be idolized as no other political leader has. His statue is one of the largest in the Parliament complex. Political parties have reaped rich electoral dividends riding on his name. A decades-old cartoon of him in a textbook rocked Parliament for days recently, causing parties across the political spectrum to run for cover and call for the withdrawal of the 'offending' cartoon. In Worshipping False Gods, Arun Shourie employs his scholarly rigour to cast a critical look at the legend of Ambedkar. With his distinctive eye for detail, Shourie delves into archival records to ask pertinent questions: Did Ambedkar coordinate his opposition to the freedom struggle with the British? How does his approach to social change contrast with that of Mahatma Gandhi's? Did the Constitution spring from him or did it grow as a dynamic living organism? Passionately argued and based on a mountain of facts that it presents, Worshipping False Gods compels us to go behind the myths on which discourse is built in India today.

Precedent in English Law
Precedent in English Law

Author: Rupert Cross

Publisher: Clarendon Press

Published: 1991-06-13

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 0191024449

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This fourth edition of Precedent in English Law presents a basic guide to the current doctrine of precedent in England, set in the wider context of the jurisprudential problems which any treatment of this topic involves. Such problems include the nature of _ratio_ _decidendi_ of a precedent and of its binding force, the significance of precedents alongside other sources of law, their role in legal reasoning, and the account which must be taken of them by any general theory of law. Considerable re-writing has been undertaken to update case-law and take account of the possible implications for the doctrine of precedent of the impact of European Community law, making it an indispensable work of reference for readers interested in the past history, present state, and future developments of English rules of precedent.