Law Panels Examine Constitutionalism in South Asia
Over the course of the Academic Year 2011-2012, the South Asian Law Students Association, Yale Law School, and the South Asian Studies Council, Yale University, organized a panel series titled Constitutionalism in South Asia. The series invited three speakers per panel to discuss cross-cutting themes that impact, interrogate and illustrate constitutionalism in the South-Asian sub-continent. Given the important role of courts in framing/understanding/translating socio-political issues in the language of the constitution, the impact of courts on each of the themes under discussion was a focal point of the conversation.
The first panel, held on Nov. 1, 2011 at the Yale Law School, was titled States of Violence and the Violence of States. South Asian states routinely engage in systematic violence against their citizens often in the name of some higher justificatory goal like development, peace, security or even the very survival of the state. Often such justification takes the form of creating a state of exception where the rule of law does not apply. This panel invited speakers to interrogate the practices of such forms of systematic violence by South Asian states, their implications for constitutionalism and the rule of law in South Asia, and strategies for popular resistance to the assumption of such power, both through courts and otherwise. Panelists for this event were: Menaka Guruswamy, Advocate, Supreme Court of India (and a lawyer in the Salwa Judum case); Sadia Toor, Assistant Professor of Sociology, College of Staten Island, CUNY; and Nimmi Gowrinathan, Director of South Asia Programs, Operation USA. The panel was moderated by David Grewal, Associate Professor, Yale Law School.
The second panel, titled The Politics of Judicial Reform in India, was held on Jan. 31, 2012, at the Yale Law School. The panel critiqued recent judicial reform proposals in India, exploring the content, drivers, ideology, justifications and potential impact of the proposed judicial reforms. Prof. Vikramaditya Khanna, Michigan Law School; Prof. Jayanth Krishnan, Maurer School of Law, Indiana University; and, Mr. Varun Gauri, Senior Economist, World Bank, spoke at the event. Prof. Muneer Ahmed, Clinical Professor of Law, Yale Law School moderated the event.
The third and final panel in the series was held on April 16, 2012, at the Macmillan Center. The panel, titled Taking Socio-Economic Rights Seriously: The Indian Experience, invited speakers to reflect upon the role of courts, social movements, and statutory mechanisms, in defining and implementing socio-economic rights in India. Speakers discussed the value of a rights-based framework in effectuating socio-economic justice, as well as the tensions, politics and competing ideologies that impact the multiple struggles for, and sites of, socio-economic rights and (more broadly) socio-economic justice. Justice Dhananjaya Chandrachud, Judge, Bombay High Court; Prof. Balakrishnan Rajagopal, MIT; and Mr. Nicholas Robinson, Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi spoke at the event, which was moderated by Prof. David Grewal, Associate Professor, Yale Law School.