Two and a half years into law school, I feel more of a layperson with much less stake in law and legal thought than when I was doing science in 11th grade. This alienation from one's core, makes them assess their choices from a much wider view and notice the structural errors of how they have been going about what they thought was their strongest suit. In a premier law institute, one would hear big words and concepts like "comparative constitutionalism" as a part of academic and breakfast-table discussions and lesser people like myself will just end up riding with the tide without really understanding or contributing much to the discussions. Fed up with this trend, I wanted to read a primer on the constitution and some important judgments, and I ended up reading "Landmark Judgments That Changed India" by Justice Asok Kumar Ganguly which did a good job satisfying the purpose. What follows in this post is just a concentrated essence of the book which I hope helps me and other laypeople reading this post to gain a level-zero understanding of important aspects of the Indian constitution brought out by a number of judgments.
CONSTANTS AND VARIABLES
The book opens with the much-discussed 'Basic Structure' of the Indian constitution. The basic structure is an undefined, yet, indispensable set of fundamental features of the constitution that are universally understood and accepted and cannot be altered, removed, or amended through constitutional processes or otherwise.
The chapter on basic structure begins with an introduction to judgments on the Parliament's power to amend the Consitution and the Supreme Court's power of judicial review of the said amendments. The Supreme Court in Shankari Prasad v. UOI (1951) ruled that fundamental rights are not really immune from Constitutional Amendments as they are not to be interpreted as "law" in the context of Article 13. Later, in IC Golaknath v State of Punjab (1967), the majority held that contentious amendments, although narrowed the scope of fundamental rights are still valid but such amendments that abridge fundamental rights shall not be made hence. This is where we see a change in the method of interpretation of the imperative nature of fundamental rights.
Followed by this, in one of India's most important judgments Kesavananda Bharati v State of Kerala, 10 out of 13 judges held that Golaknath was wrongly decided and although the amending power of the Parliament is different from the legislative power and can reach every part of the Constitution there exists a basic structure in the Constitution which cannot be touched by any power. This basic structure is a moral reality consisting of inherent principles that the Constitution must always look to uphold. It is quite ironic that though democracy is one of the inherent principles of the basic structure, even democracy does not have the power to change it.
In the third chapter, the author discusses the dichotomy between 2 very prominent cases- AK Gopalan v. State of Madras (1950) and Menaka Gandhi v. Union of India (1978), both discuss how constitutional provisions regarding fundamental rights are to be interpreted, especially in view with other contentious statutory provisions. The former judgment interpreted fundamental rights (in the context of the Preventive Detention Act and whether it violated Articles 19 and 21) conservatively by just making sure that the procedure established by law was present and not caring about whether said the law itself is in violation of fundamental rights, which were at the time regarded as mutually exclusive from one another. However, the latter judgment held that the court should look to expand the reach and ambit of fundamental rights where each fundamental right can be looked at in relation to another.
DEMOCRACY AS A CORE VALUE
Like it or not, India is a democracy where election and dissent are the most important indicators of its functioning. Hence, it becomes essential for the Supreme Court to ensure that institutions of power do not go overboard in enforcement to an extent that it harms a characteristic believed to be the ethos of the nation. Two leading judgments on upholding these democratic values were ADM Jabalpur v. Shivkant Shukla and SR Bommai v Union of India. ADM Jabalpur is a peculiar case that was during the infamous Emergency time in 1978 when various people including political leaders were detained under the Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA) and numerous writ petitions claiming for their release were filed in High Courts across the country. When the case went to the Supreme Court the majority decision actually upheld the detention and said that no person had the right to move a writ petition under Article 226 to challenge the legality of the detention on the grounds that the order is illegal or malafide. The judgment is peculiar because the only dissenting opinion of the judgment by HR Khanna who sacrificed his position of becoming the Chief Justice of India because of such dissent is actually the law that applies today, and rightly so. He was the only one with the fortitude to lay out that Article 226, empowering the High Court to issue writs of habeas corpus, was an indispensable part of the Constitution and a detenu not being able to challenge his detention through Constitutional means is a violation of his right to life and personal liberty which is a fundamental right under Article 21.
SR Bommai was a very important case as it streamlined the center-state relations immensely at the time while deciding to curtail the misuse of imposing the President's rule toppling democratically elected state-governments under the powers of Article 356. The judgment laid out a set of guidelines ensuring that the powers under Article 356 will only be used sparingly and not be exploited by central governments to exercise their political vendetta against states ruled by parties that have differences with the ruling party. Furthermore, subsequent cases such as Union of India v. Association for Democratic Reforms and PUCL v. Union of India strengthened India's democracy by ruling judgments in that resulted in more transparency of electoral parties and candidates with the people.
EQUALITY THROUGH EDUCATION
"Access" is an important term to understand inequality especially with respect to education as the lack of which due to historic and incidental injustices is what keeps the disadvantaged people in the exact same socio-economic position for generations. The book discusses cases such as TMA Pai Foundation v. State of Karnataka and subsequent cases which opened the gates for many autonomous educational institutions to function along with the establishing of minority educational institutions with more protections and freedoms given by the government. However, this decision and argumentation in other legal discussions have been largely criticized for its one-sidedness and lack of empathy towards Hindu religious institutions.
Later, Constitutional Amendments were made enacting the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act which included the right to education as a fundamental right. This principle behind equality of access to education was used much earlier in the form of affirmative action in favor of SCs, STs, and OBCs through various Constitutional provisions and judgments looking to protect the aforementioned groups (mainly SCs and STs) from social injustice and exploitation and ensuring socio-economic upliftment through representation in bureaucratic and educational institutions. Indra Sawhney v. Union of India was a frontrunning judgment in ruling the same which was followed by numerous law commission reports, Constitutional Amendments, special commissions to review reservations for various communities including and apart from SC/STs such as Socially Economic and Backward Classes and ensuring they are represented and provided access to education and employment.
PUNITIVE SIDE OF THE CONSTITUTION
It is believed that law, in its most primitive form was only based on crimes and their punishments. Thus, the punitive side of the law is its most important one for a nation as it decides the standard of morality and order among the people of the nation. We see the book indulging in three particular instances relating to crime and punishments which had major impacts on constitutionalism- the death penalty, Constitutional powers to grant pardons and remissions, procedural guidelines on sexual harassment.
The death penalty has always been a matter of human rights pitted against the maximum extent of punishment for a criminal. Despite the constitutionality of the same being challenged various times, Bachan Singh v. State of Punjab was one of the landmark judgments upholding its constitutionality but also said that it could only be done in the 'rarest of rare' cases. Macchi Singh v. State of Punjab expanded this doctrine determining it by the uncommonness of the crime rendering life imprisonment inadequate, and the circumstances of the crime such that there is no other option but to impose death sentence even after according maximum weightage of mitigating circumstances in favor of the offender, terrorism cases for example.
The book moves on to discuss Articles 72 and 161 which empower the President and Governors of states to grant pardons or remissions of punishment of convicts when the former believe that the convicts have paid their debt to society, or were wrongfully convicted, or to circumvent the Court's Judgment if there were any flaws in the judicial process. Maru Ram v Union of India made sure that neither the President nor the Governor should exercise this power arbitrarily and should only do so with the aid and advice of the council of ministers.
Finally, the book talks about the all-important 'Vishaka Guidelines' which emerged from the case Vishaka vs. The State of Rajasthan in order to address the age-old social evil- sexual harassment of women, especially in the workplace and other institutions over the past century. The judgment made it clear that the prevention of abuse of women is an important aspect of gender-equality which is a fundamental constitutional right. The guidelines were formed to define and identify acts of sexual harassment, set out duties of the employers and concerned authorities regarding the initiation of criminal proceedings and disciplinary action against the perpetrator along with giving other procedural guidelines such as creating awareness regarding the same.
TO SUM UP...
This post is surely not among the most original and creative ones especially with respect to the topic at hand. Whilst there are incredible contributions made in the literature on constitutional law even by those who are around my age I believe that a brief run-through of important constitutional provisions and judgments made for myself and the readers wouldn't harm. This applies especially because my knowledge of Constitutional law is not great and is probably at a comparable level with most of the readers of the post (who aren't lawyers or law-students). This book is basically an overview of some of the most important constitutional provisions and judgments since the constitution was effectuated, and this post is nothing but an overview of that overview. Hopefully, in subsequent blogposts I would be able to provide content with a good blend of factual knowledge and my own understanding, questions, and interpretations.
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