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This article is a critique on the state of compliance with the Indian CSR regulatory framework by companies in India, based on a qualitative content analysis of their self-reported CSR-related disclosures for the 2018–19 financial year. This article reveals important findings related to the issues of how companies are complying with the Indian CSR law. Most significantly, this article uncovers that many companies are not complying with the spending as well as its other statutory requirements. Many companies demonstrate a 'tick-box compliance' approach, with possible indications of circumventing the law for fulfilling self-interests. In particular, the government companies mainly undertake CSR activities in response to the national and state governments' directions. This article advocates the inclusion of systematic and detailed procedures to increase accountability and transparency in companies' CSR activities. This article also calls for the establishment and an increased role of a specialised and independent regulatory watch-dog for auditing, monitoring and assessing the CSR activities of companies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I juxtapose the demand for castration as a law reform measure with the parallel legal discourse on "emasculation" as the crime of grievous hurt. Juxtaposing these discourses on crime and punishment, I point to the curious lack of engagement with castration as a punishment with emasculation as a crime. The story of emasculation is found in the legal history of grievous hurt. I have argued that the legal interpretation of emasculation has different outcomes depending on the gender of the accused. Judges are unable to name male victimhood, while the law is punitive toward women who attack their assailants in self-defense. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The question of providing due recognition to E-Wills is not a new one. As industries across the world increasingly rely upon technology during the global outbreak of COVID-19, it should come as no surprise that legal professionals have renewed their interest in the present topic. However, at the outset, we must view the present situation with a simultaneous sense of both caution and excitement. If we keep the technological dangers apart (in arguendo), the present situation opens the door for courts to intervene and to bring about a sudden overhaul of the ancién Family and Succession Law regime in commonwealth nations. But on the other hand, numerous hurdles exist--namely with regard to the recording and testing of the genuineness of an E-Will, for example. The question of the validity of an E-Will in probate cases under the Succession Acts of various common law countries is also an interesting one. This article seeks to move a step ahead from Ghatak by analyzing how two years on from her 2017 publication, the COVID-19 crisis has, in all probability, made major common law jurisdictions (with a focus on India, the most populous and judicially overburdened of them all) move into the uncharted territory of recognizing E-Wills as a necessity. Further, this article addresses how the courts can retain their active role and thus obviate the need for a legislative process (presumably, a hushed ordinance) in order to formalize the inclusion of digital methodology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the constitutional, material and normative impact of land grabbing of propertied Muslims in and around Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh via the notorious Indian State legislative the "Enemy Property Act of 1968". The Enemy Property Act was implemented after the Indo-Pak War of 1965 as a defense measure during the war and by 1968 had developed into a measure to protect Indian interests from "enemy" States. In the process, the article explores issues of State concern surrounding Indian Muslim belonging and constant yet thinly veiled demands to prove themselves as not working against Indian interests. Furthermore, the article attends to the issue of how these supposedly "Defense of India" legislative measures became a permanent subject of institutional inquiry and discrimination against Muslims in India (particularly in Uttar Pradesh). Based on important findings drawn from court cases contesting the Act, this study contends that the Enemy Property Act was vital to India's Post Colonial conceptions of territorial nationalism and inextricably linked to normalizing Hinduized notions of citizen belonging despite the State under the Congress party claiming to be secular when this law was enacted. Today Hindu Nationalism draws upon that legacy of constructing Muslims in India as "citizen-enemies." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Justin Rowlatt, the BBC's South Asia Correspondent, writes a reflection on the 1919 Amritsar Massacre and the 1919 Rowlatt Act, which was a precursor to the Massacre. The author is the great-grandson of Sir Sidney Rowlatt, who was responsible for the 1919 legislation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Article explores the general stance of international law and domestic legal orders regarding the legal effects of international law in the Indian domestic legal system. This Article argues that India has been a significant contributor to the field of international law. However, India remains reluctant to draft treaties that restrict free rein and that seek expressly to accord domestic courts a judicial enforcement role. This Article examines the implementation process of international law in the Indian domestic system and addresses the requirements imposed by international law. It critically examines the fundamental dichotomy in approaches at the domestic constitutional level that give legal effect to treaties to address the question of who has treaty-making power. This Article examines the role of the judiciary in the implementation of international law in India. Finally, this Article provides suggestions for the new legal framework for the better implementation of international law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The pace of industrial and allied infrastructure development in India is encumbered by scarcity in the supply of land. As a result, the state in India has frequently resorted to expropriation of land through conversion of land away from its traditional uses and through displacement of communities. Consequently, land acquisition in the country is mired in disputes over human rights and environmental rights violations. In the face of continued political support for infrastructure‐led development in India, those who stand to lose their land have often resorted to judicial recourse for pressing their rights. This article draws on empirical evidence from court cases related to two urban development projects in the states of Karnataka and Kerala to examine how courts have responded to the question of violation of land rights and appeals against land acquisition for the two projects. The author argues that the courts, while responding to the claims against the two projects, have refrained from holding the implementing agencies or the state governments accountable even in cases where there were recognizable incidents of malfeasance. The article illustrates that the inability of the courts to confront the state lends a tacit assent to the development agenda of the state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Against most male‐dominated accounts of professional work, elite law firms in India pose a puzzling exception: women make up about half of these firms, even at senior levels of partnership. Using in‐depth interviews with over 130 professionals in India's elite litigation, transactional law, and consulting firms, this research suggests that elite law firms—as new local organizations—aggressively differentiate themselves from their more traditional peers to establish organizational legitimacy. At the same time, as institutions trying to mimic global firms without actual scripts for doing so, these firms engage in a form of "speculative isomorphism" through which they signal meritocracy and modernity to their global audience. Because equal gender representation is one such mechanism, the result is environments where certain kinds of women are uniquely advantaged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cows have been the subject of political petitioning in South Asia for over a hundred years. This article examines the changing relationship between communities and the state in India through the transformation of petitioning practices—from 'monster' petitions, to postcard campaigns and constitutional writs—by the proponents and opponents of the cow protection movement from the late nineteenth century through to the first decades of independence. The article shows that, instead of disciplining and formalizing popular politics, petitioning provides channels for mobilization and disruption. As Hindus and Muslims engaged in competitive petitioning to rally a public, persuade the executive, or litigate through the courts, the question of cow slaughter was recast from one of community representation to religious belief, to property rights, to federalism, and, finally, questions of national economic development. In the absence of representative government in colonial India, Hindus for cow protection generated massive petitions which argued that they represented popular democratic will. Despite the lack of a constitution, Muslim petitioners sought to establish a judicially enforceable framework to protect their right to cow slaughter. Independence, which brought both democracy and a written constitution, caused a fundamental break with older claims and forms of petitioning, and led to both Hindus and Muslims seeking to settle the debate through writ petitions before constitutional courts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The protection of whistleblowers has been analysed from different perspectives such as disclosure, accountability, good governance and so on. However, there is a vacuum with respect to analysis of whistleblowers in terms of access to justice. This article aims to fill that gap by offering a new perspective for examining the issues involving the protection and encouragement of whistleblowers. Taking a victim-centric approach, this article asks, 'How does Indian law respond to the legal needs and legal problems of whistleblowers?' For this purpose, the Whistle Blowers Protection Act, 2011 and the Whistle Blowers Protection Amendment Bill, 2015 are examined and recommendations made as to how access to justice can be made a reality for whistleblowers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

National Law University, which are the premier institution for the law studies established in most of the states. The paper analysis about the issues like, Vice chancellor, teaching faculties, Library collections and the Librarians and content of the National Law Universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much of the debate on the relationship between social norms and corruption has been confined to comparisons across countries. But a gap between what is morally acceptable by a society and what is legally correct can exist within individual countries as well. In such cases, it is possible for individual acts of corruption to be seen to be morally justified. This paper explores the emergence of this gap through the imposition of British law on a very different descriptive morality in nineteenth century Indian city of Bengaluru. Drawing from this experience it seeks to identify the dynamics of the process in a way that would allow for it to be used to understand corruption across different societies, and the lessons it has for an effective strategy against endemic corruption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scanning the South Asia Archive, it is hard not to be impressed by the rich possibilities of investigation and discovery. Part of the Archive deals with how India’s British rulers attempted to govern, and thus to shape, its society through the passage towards modernity. These days we are rightly suspicious that their interests lay more in their own modernity than that of their colonial ‘subjects’ and that their rule was marked more by authoritarianism and exploitation than responsibility and compassion – and many documents in the Archive, especially concerning taxation and criminality, certainly attest the case. The reports and commissions on various acts of riot and revolt are frequently marked by a bizarre combination of bravado and anxiety. Equally, they – and many other policy documents in the Archive – reveal often deep-seated differences of opinion within the establishment. Policy documents and reports of colonial officials, however, constitute only one part of the Archive. Much more, it provides evidence of how Indians tried to make, and remake, their own society during this period. Many of the ‘non-official’ sources contained in the Archive help to fill out a much broader picture of what it was like to live in this society at this time, and how Indians built their own world according to their own ideas and actions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The trust is today an international legal institution, firmly established in jurisdictions all over the world, including those in Asia. The process by which the trust and trust law were transplanted in Asia forms a rich tapestry of complex themes. A key development was the codification of trust law by the colonial government of India at the end of the nineteenth century. This embraced an ‘obligational’ model of the trust that removed the notion of ‘equitable ownership’. On the face of it, the Indian Trusts Act 1882 carried innovations in both form and substance. Although a closer examination reveals limits in the innovations, the Act proved influential in the failed attempts to codify the law in England and the transplantation of trust law into the mixed legal system of Ceylon and the civilian system of Japan. The historical analysis of these developments sheds light on modern debates about the transplantation of law in general, the comparative study of trust law and theoretical discussions about the nature of the trust. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the rule of law in the 19th-century northwest frontier region of India (now an area of Pakistan) during the period of British colonial rule, an area administered as a non-regulation province which allowed for expanded rights of local government and legal officers to deal with criminal issues at their own discretion. Topics include state violence, the East India Company, the Punjab Government, and the creation of the Anglo-Indian Codes pertaining to the administration and procedures related to criminal offenses in India.

Existen pocos datos sistemáticos sobre el alcance del incumplimiento de la legislación en los países en desarrollo, que se cree generalizado. Con datos de dos encuestas de empresas, los autores cuantifican el incumplimiento de la Ley de fábricas de la India y observan que las empresas infractoras doblan a las conformes y superan con mucho a las que eluden la ley mediante ciertos ajustes. Analizan las principales tendencias y pautas de incumplimiento y las ponen en relación con la ausencia de empresas de tamaño medio en la India y los debates sobre reglamentación. También destacan cuestiones para investigaciones futuras. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This discussion contributes to the history of the colonial rule of law that governed market practice in India using the South Asian indigenous credit institution known as hundi. A centuries-old artery of credit for Indian merchant networks, and a living institution that has largely been driven underground by twenty-first-century laws, hundi provides a window into the dynamics of colonial law from the commercial and financial legislation of the 1880s to the final attempt to codify hundi in the 1960s and 1970s in a bid to bridge the growing disconnect between the Indian indigenous banking sector and modern banking. I chart the British colonial and post-independence history of hundi as means of understanding the wider political, legislative and economic dynamics of colonial state formation and the legacies of legislation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In early 2013, the Indian government introduced new rules governing the conduct of clinical trials involving human participants. Among other provisions, the law requires that sponsors of research compensate participants who are injured during the course of their research participation. This article examines the effects of India's compensation law and the efforts that policymakers in India have made to tailor the law since its passage. I use the legal concept of acoustic separation as a framework to explain and justify the approach that India has taken in refining its regulation of research related injuries. I conclude that India's example may provide useful lessons for research sponsors and lawmakers in other regulatory states seeking to promote a well-regulated biomedical research industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since independence, India has had electoral quotas for Scheduled Castes (SCs, Dalits, “untouchables”). These quotas have been praised for empowering members of a deprived community, but have also been criticized for bringing to power SC politicians who are mere tools in the hands of the upper castes. Tracing the history of these quotas through four critical junctures, I show how a British attempt to strengthen their own control of India eventually resulted in one of the world's most extensive quota systems for minorities. The quota system was in the end a compromise between several political goals, and was not strongly supported by anyone. Also, while the quotas were designed to integrate SC politicians into mainstream politics, there was a subtle and gradual shift in the debate about them, to being about development for the SC community as such. This created a disjuncture between the design of the quota system and the expectation of what it would achieve. The case of quotas in India illustrates how policy choices often result from long path-dependent processes, how policy makers struggle with trade-offs when trying to design institutions, and also the power of expectations in shaping the perceptions of the outcomes of those institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The well-known classification of legal procedure into "four feet" presents certain conceptual problems for the Indian legal tradition that various Smṛtikāras and commentators have attempted to resolve in different and sometimes contradictory ways. These difficulties arise because the four feet originally referred in Indian legal theory to four distinct, hierarchical legal domains rather than procedural means for reaching a verdict. The earliest attested discussion of the four feet, found in Kauṭilya's Arthaśāstra, indicates that early legal theorists understood the greater legal order as being comprised of four hierarchical domains and that these domains were ordered by the state as expressed in the original formulation of the four feet. Among the four legal domains, that of vyavahāra was developed by the state itself as a realm of public, transactional law meant to address disputes that could not be resolved in other legal forums. From this we can conclude that the origin of Indian jurisprudence lies with state efforts to formalize and enforce the laws of public transactions. The reinterpretation of the four feet by later jurists was motivated perhaps by resistance to one of the fundamental relationships expressed in the four feet, namely that royal authority possessed the greatest legal authority, independent of Brāhmaņical law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the mid-1990s, formal scientific risk management has been codified at all levels of food safety governance in affluent states: firm-level standards, national regulation, and international law. Developing countries' access to affluent importers and power in international standard-setting fora now hinges on their scientific capacity. This article explores the consequences of these developments in India, which moved quickly from resistance to acquiescence, and then later to mobilization around narratives of scientific risk management's local benefits. The case suggests a two-stage model of scientization among developing countries: (1) coercive and competitive mechanisms drive adoption of science-based governance models, and (2) as local actors mobilize to meet foreign demands, they attach their own interests and agendas to science-based reforms. The outcome is a set of rational myths about the benefits of scientization. The article draws on content analysis of organizational, policy, and news documents and a small set of interviews with highly placed pubic officials and industry representatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article looks at debates over a proposed uniform civil code (UCC) for all Indian citizens, with a particular focus on feminist critiques of the UCC. The author examines the relationship between individual rights and the rights of minorities as codified in the UCC. Topic discussed the concept of uniformity, the Hindu Nationalist political party the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), heteronormativity, and women's property rights.

Abstract: Background: In India, motorized two-wheeler (MTW) road traffic accidents injure or kill 72,000 women annually. Before the Motor Vehicle Act of 1988, which required mandatory helmet use for MTW riders, a study found 0.6% of all MTW pillions (backseat passengers) were helmeted. Citing religious protests to the legislation, Delhi's high court exempted the city's 12 million women from the law. We hypothesize that currently male pillions use helmets more frequently than females, and that overall pillion helmet usage has increased over the last 20 y. Methods: Continuous video was recorded in half-hour blocks at four locations in Delhi on separate days, totaling 8 hours of high- and low-volume traffic. Videos were reviewed with at least two reviewers extracting the number of MTW pillions, as well as their gender, approximate age, and helmet usage. Results: Of 4010 pillions identified, 63.8% were male, 32.4% female, and 3.3% children. Among males, there were significantly more helmeted pillions (88.4%, P < 0.001); among females, there were significantly more unhelmeted pillions (99.4%, P < 0.001). Among unhelmeted pillions, significantly more were female (81.4%) than male (P < 0.001). Current overall pillion helmet use is significantly higher than historical rate (P < 0.001). Conclusions: The significantly higher male pillion helmet usage compared with females indicates Delhi's helmet law is associated with increased compliance among those who fall under its jurisdiction. This augments the growing body of evidence that mandatory helmet laws are efficacious, thus repealing the exemption of women is an important step in increasing female pillion helmet usage. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Judicial roles provided the raj with major dilemmas. One persistent dispute related to civil servants sitting as judges. Critics argued that civil servants had a superficial legal education and lacked appropriate practical experience of work in the courts. Defenders of their judicial role contended that the best training for judges lay in administrative work on the plains of the sub-continent. Governors-general, viceroys, and others in executive positions claimed that such work provided officials with an understanding of Indian society and that this social knowledge made them effective judges. Professional judges drawn from the ranks of barristers and sitting in the major cities of Calcutta, Bombay and Madras frequently contested this view and the result was sustained disagreement. At the heart of the debate lay competing visions of justice. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Disabled/'differently abled' persons by virtue of being human have the right to enjoy human rights to life, liberty, equality, security, and dignity. However, due to social indifference, psychological barriers, a limited definition of 'disability' entitling protection of law, and a lack of proper data, disabled persons in India remain an invisible category. Although several laws exit to ensure their full and effective participation in society, they remain insufficient as they are primarily based on the government's discretion. At the same time, whenever the judiciary finds an opportunity, it acts as a real protector of disabled persons, but it is not feasible to knock on the door of the judiciary for every request. Interestingly, various civil societies and human rights activists have occasionally asserted the rights of the disabled. However, unless the foundation stones of law are fortified, disabled persons cannot fully realize their rights. It is high time to enact effective laws, with timely implementation, to protect their interests and empower their capabilities that are based on a 'rights-based approach' rather than on the charity, medical, or social approaches. Thus, the horizons of law must be expanded to provide a 'human friendly environment' for all of the disabled to overcome the barriers that impair their development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Courts have played an important role in defining the relationship between religions and the state in India. Litigation by or against religious institutions has obliged the judiciary to engage in quasi-theological reasoning in order to determine what is 'religious', and therefore beyond state control, and what is 'secular', and therefore subject to government regulation. In pre-colonial India, religious conflicts were settled by means of local arbitration or by the threat or fact of violence. After British legal institutions were established, groups and individuals learned to use the courts to settle such conflicts. This tendency to seek legal solutions to religious disputes has continued in independent India. Since the state tends always to seek an increase of its powers, courts frequently decide such cases to the detriment of the litigants. Examples studied include the Maharaj Libel Case (1862), the Ramakrishna Mission Case (1995), and the Sri Aurobindo Society Case (1982). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses infirmities prevailing in the justice system of India dating back to the introduction of colonial jurisprudence through the Indian Act of Evidence. Topics included are the exposition of responsibility for burden of proof and the establishment of admissibility, the compulsion of the British colonial government to go through evidence collection in going after revolutionary terrorists, 50*2.2the compilation of Village Crime Note Books by police forces.

Given the region's long history of civilization, a claim that India is home to 25% of the world's present-day and recent hunter-gatherers seems both unlikely and counterintuitive. Research on seven South Indian foraging cultures reveals, however, that three accommodating aspects of Hindu culture may have served to protect them from assimilation pressure until the twentieth century. First, because they are a source of valued forest trade goods, they can be viewed as yet another occupational specialist group within the larger system. Second, unlike true aliens, they are considered to be kindred peoples who need merely to give lip service to Hindu notions of propriety. Third, due to several of their practices, they are seen as being pure by analogy with simple, forest-dwelling Hindu ascetics. Accepted and valued by Hindus for what they are, there has been minimal pressure to draw the huntergatherers into the larger society as any other kind of specialist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Forests have been the major source of livelihood for human beings since time immemorial. So far the tribal people of India are concerned; they have developed a symbiotic relationship with the forest due to their close proximity with the forest as the natural habitation. The tribal communities live in about 15 percent of the country's areas in various ecological and geo-climatic conditions, ranging from plains, forests, hills and inaccessible areas. The collection and marketing of Minor Forest Produce have been a major source of livelihood for the most tribal families contributing around 70 percent of their total income. Forest can be better protected by the people living in the forest and depending for their survival on its natural wealth. However, once the deprivation of right to live in the forest started way back in 1865, when the first Imperial Forest Act was enacted and Imperial Forest Department was established, and that has continued even after the six decades of independence, it resulted into conflict and tension between the forest officials and forest dwellers, especially the tribal people. The paper seeks a critical note on the history of forest laws and policies in India and their impact on tribal people with the following objectives: 1. To trace the historical importance of forests on the life and living of the tribal people 2. To highlight the impact of policies/approaches adopted by the planners of the country for the development of tribal people 3. To trace the legislative journey of forest laws and their impact on tribal people 4. To find out the future implication of new forest law in protecting the rights of the tribal people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to the history of ‘criminal tribes’, policing and governance in British India. It focuses on one colonial experiment—the policing of Moghias, declared by British authorities to be ‘robbers by hereditary profession’—which was the immediate precursor of the first Criminal Tribes Act of 1871, but which so far altogether has passed under historians’ radar. I argue that at stake in the Moghia operations, as in most other colonial ‘criminal tribe’ initiatives, was neither the control of crime (as colonial officials claimed) nor the management of India's itinerant groups (as most historians argue), but the uprooting of the indigenous policing system. British presence on the subcontinent was punctuated with periodic panics over ‘extraordinary crime’, through which colonial authorities advanced their policing practices and propagated their way of governance. The leading crusader against this ‘crisis’ was the Thuggee and Dacoity Department, which was as instrumental in the ‘discovery’ of the ‘Moghia menace’ and ‘criminal tribes’ in the late nineteenth century as in the earlier suppression of the ‘cult of Thuggee’. As a policing initiative, the Moghia campaign failed consistently for more than two decades. Its failures, however, reveal that behind the façade-anxieties over ‘criminal castes’ and ‘crises of crime’ stood attempts at a systemic change of indigenous governance. The diplomatic slippages of the campaign also expose the fact that the indigenous rule by patronage persisted—and that the consolidation of the colonial state was far from complete—well into the late nineteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article undertakes a comparative study of the concept of federal supremacy as it appears in the constitutional texts and judicial doctrine of the United States, Australia, India, Canada, and Germany. It discusses the complex judicial techniques and principles developed in each of these federations, and argues that the approaches based on “conflict” and “field,” respectively, should be distinguished as opposing paradigms of interpretation. The field approach is criticized as being incompatible with a coherent vision of supremacy, and as being itself replete with conceptual problems that are unnecessary to the resolution of cases. It is further suggested that the conflict approach is in itself sufficiently flexible to be adapted to all situations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article presents information on the significant legal developments in India during the year 2012. It informs that the government of India issued several press notes liberalizing foreign direct investment (FDI) norms in multi-brand retail (MBR), single-brand retail, aviation, power exchanges, and broadcasting. It further informs that the most contentious and politically sensitive of the new changes to FDI policy is the opening up of MBR.

This article analyses the continued denial of equality to women in India's religious personal laws by focusing on the rights of brothers and sisters to illustrate the repeated failures of law. Although this failure has been normalised by deploying various conceptual tools, these theoretical trends need to be challenged. This article examines the 2005 amendment to the Hindu Succession Act which, although giving women extensive property rights, still gave sisters lesser rights than their brothers. It demonstrates that the concept of religious personal laws is a construct which is often used uncritically, and that it legitimises the denial of equal rights to women. The paper combines critical geography scholarship and legal feminist insights to argue that the law must be aware of spatial practices and that it is essential for legal thinkers to engage with the law in more than an instrumental sense. It analyses the processes of knowledge production and explores how the constitutive aspects of legal knowledge can be better integrated into legal scholarship. It thus aims to make visible the many spaces of the law: where laws are made; where ideas about men and women as owners of property are normalised; and where the law is expected to be implemented. It argues for legal scholars to be present and engaged in the contestation of meanings of the law. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The High Court of Delhi recently declared that Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, a colonial anti-sodomy law that effectively criminalised homosexuality, violates rights guaranteed by the Constitution of India. This has been the first juridical recognition of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender folk as citizens and also the first time that the juridical subject has been ascribed a 'sexuality'. 'Sexuality', in other words, has been identified as an aspect of personhood, the 'self' that the subject refers to. And yet, same-sex desire in India is not contained within discrete bodies, much less so within bodies presumed in bio-medical or juridical discourses as 'sexuality types'. This recognition lies at the centre of the Queer movement which made the ascription of sexuality to the juridical subject in the first place. Based on ethnographic fieldwork related to the litigation, this paper argues that the juridical register requires demands for rights to articulate in terms of subjectivity and personhood, and examines the ways in which this disjuncture came to be managed by the movement. The paper examines theoretical approaches to subjectivity and argues for a conceptual distinction between the idea of the 'subject' and the 'self'. Subjectivity, it is argued, is better understood in terms of forms of (legal) legibility, bringing our focus onto the political-economic, historical and cultural conditions under which these forms come to be performed as embodiments-in-the-world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inclusion of marginalized sections and minorities remains one of the most vexing problems for democratic politics. This article discusses the enactment of a recent Indian law, 'The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Rights) Act, 2006', as exemplifying the possibilities of inclusion of marginalized groups in democratic processes. The law was enacted in response to a nationwide mobilization of marginalized forest dwellers and their advocates demanding rights over forests. Grassroots-level formations representing forest dwellers came together across scales and spaces to form a network that successfully negotiated India's democratic politics to achieve the passage of the law. The case illustrates the role of grassroots mobilizations in creating alternate discourses of legitimacy, networking across scales and locations, and using spaces provided by representative democracy to include the voices and demands of the marginalized in democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the historical role of Sandra Day O'Connor, first woman appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court and the State–Tribe Relationship in the U.S Topics discussed include federal Indian law and its importance in constitutional law, relationship between the U.S. and the Native Americans and role of Supreme Court Justices in Indian law development.

The article discusses the role of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) in feminist legal reforms. Particular focus is given to the use of ADR in marriage disputes in the Parivarik Adalat, or Family Court, in Kolkata, India. According to the author, such reforms have limited impact because they are enacted within the context of gendered cultural conceptions of conjugality. It is suggested that women litigants in the Family Court have only limited legal agency and are subjected to judges' directions and mediation. Details on the relationship between marriage, poverty, and heterosexual privilege are presented. Other topics include feminist jurisprudence, reconciliation, and subjectivity.

Data and information constitute a valuable resource both for the companies in general and individuals in specific. The traditional paper based transaction has been replaced by electronic transaction and now a day's most of the valuable data and information's are stored in electronic medium. Therefore data and information security have become a matter of great concern for every agencies acting on faith of e-transaction. In India there remains an added significance owing to the fact that a growing number of companies seek more centralized and less expensive methods of processing information, they're turning to offshore outsourcing to fulfill many of their business and human resources processes. Data theft is not in itself a new concept, but has become an increasingly important issue in the digital age. The new mode of communication, its malleability, transmissibility, networking capacity, affect our lives in many and sometimes surprising ways, it requires that we find new legal solutions for new social questions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses legislation concerning rape in India. According to the author, rape laws are deeply rooted in systems of exchange which define sex as a kind of property necessary for women to access the material benefits of marriage. It is suggested that the system's emphasis on women's victimhood and the government's protection is frustrating to feminists even while the criminalization and prosecution of sexual violence is in itself important progress. Topics discussed include consent, a 2004 rape case involving actors Rudranil Ghosh and Oindrila Chakraborty, and feminist jurisprudence.

One of the most contentious political issues in postcolonial India is the unfulfilled project of a ‘uniform civil code’ which would override the existing ‘personal laws’ or religion-based laws of domestic relations, inheritance and religious institutions. If the personal laws are admitted to be preserved (if somewhat distorted) remnants of ‘religious laws’, then the legitimacy of state intervention is called into question, especially since the Indian state claims to be secular. This paper, by discussing the history of the lesser-known Christian personal law, demonstrates that this conundrum is of considerable heritage. From the earliest days of British imperial rule in India, the quest to establish a universal body of law conflicted with other legal principles which upheld difference: that of religion, as well as race. It was the historical role of Indian Christians to occasion legal dilemmas regarding the jurisdictions of British and ‘native’ law, and concurrently about the identity of people subject to those different laws. In trying to discover who the Indian Christians were, and what laws ought to apply to them, British judges had perforce to reflect on who the ‘British’ were, whilst also dealing with conflicting collective claims made by Hindus, Muslims, Parsis, and Christians themselves about their own identity and religious rights. The Indian Christian personal law was an unintended by-product of this process, a finding which throws light both on the dynamics of colonial legislation, and on the essentially modern nature of Indian personal laws. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article outlines the report of the Law Commission of India, titled "Reforms in the Judiciary--Some Suggestions," submitted to the Union Minister of Law and Justice and the Ministry of Law and Justice of India. The proposals tackled the selection and appointment of High Court judges, age of retirement, the number of judges and creation of new Benches, working days and vacations, work culture and speedy justice. Recommendations also focused on the application of integrity, virtue and ethics, governance, anti-corruption and dispute resolution.

The article offers information on the aftermath of the Union Carbide Corp. factory disaster in Bhopal, India on December 4, 1984 related to political aspects, and its condition after 25 years. It states that the disaster was considered the first real disaster of globalization. It mentions that the legal systems of India and the U.S. has its own way to settle the civil and criminal aspects of the disaster. Arguments have occurred mentioning that the judicial proceedings should be done in American courts, and the Indian government represent itself as the victims of the disaster.

The article focuses on the legal provisions when drafting arbitration clauses in India-related contracts. It states that the New York Convention (NYC) provides for restrictive list of grounds on which the courts of its member states can refuse to recognize and enforce foreign arbital awards. Moreover, advice on drafting of arbitration clauses are also presented which includes the determination of the seat of arbitration outside India and avoiding any reference to Indian law in the contract.

This article examines the often misconceived problem of insurgency and various political, social, and law and order problems of northeast India, which Sanjib Baruah calls "Northeast India's Durable Disorder." The region has been stereotyped by the postcolonial state of India as a "disturbed area" infested with insurgents and militants. In its attempts to resolve this "durable disorder," India fails to engage with its underlying causes in the construction of new political boundaries in both the colonial and postcolonial eras. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the issue on the human rights and environmental rights in India associated to its remarkable paradoxes. It stresses the paradox of a "Shining India," making it an economic superpower in terms of information technology and financial services. It cites its adoptation of the World Bank-IMF model of "Structural Adjustment" or the LPG program as well as the explanation of Utsa Patnaik, one of the leading economists in the country, on the development at the expense of the poor and marginalized sections of society. It mentions one of the cases that illustrates the increasingly illiberal attitude of the Supreme Court towards civil liberties which is also apparent in its decision to implement the Illegal Migrants Determination by Tribunals Act.

The article presents the author's views about the international arbitration law in India. He reflects on the varied aspects of Emerging India discussed during the "India and International Arbitration" one-day conference at the India Studies Center, depicting the Franklin Delano Roosevelt test or theory as well as its relevance on the issue of Indians' international arbitration. He discusses the concept of the new arbitration law in the country, known as the Arbitration and Conciliation Act of 1996, which provides a specific regime for international commercial arbitration. It states that the Law Ministry of the Government in the country has proposed the introduction of the new law in Parliament to make arbitration more workable.

The article offers a look at vertical agreements and their resultant market distortions in India. An exploration of the legislative history of the infant competition law in the country is presented, along with an overview of the "Monopolies Inquiry Commission Report" and the Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices Act of 1969. The impressions of the vertical restraints in the Indian competition fabric, in relation to the Competition Act of 2002, are highlighted. The article also tackled the issues of enforcement and the treatment of the consequential developmental disorders in the Indian economy.