This book provides a new conceptual model for considering constitutional rights from a comparative perspective. A prestigious club bars women from standing for executive positions. A homeowner refuses to rent their house to a person on grounds of their race. Each of these real-life cases involves the exercise of private power, which deprives individuals of their rights. Can these individuals invoke the Constitution in response? Horizontal Rights: An Institutional Approach brings a fresh perspective to these age-old, yet fraught issues. This book argues that constitutional scholarship and doctrine, across jurisdictions, has proceeded from an inarticulate premise called ‘default verticality.’ This is based on a set of underlying philosophical assumptions, which presumes that constitutional rights are presumptively applicable against the State, and need special justification to be applied against private parties. Departing from default verticality and its assumptions, this book argues that constitutional rights should apply horizontally between private parties where the existence of an economic, social, or cultural institution creates a difference in power between the parties, and allows one to violate the rights of the other. The institutional approach aims to be both theoretically convincing, as well as a providing a workable model for constitutional adjudication. It applies both to classic issues such as restrictive covenants, as well as cutting-edge contemporary legal problems around the regulation of platform work and the distribution of property upon divorce. This promises to be an exciting new contribution to the global conversation around constitutional rights and private power.

Offend, Shock, or Disturb is a comprehensive examination of free speech under the Indian Constitution. It explores Indian free speech jurisprudence from a doctrinal, comparative, and philosophical perspective. Taking as its point of departure the constitutional guarantee of the freedom of speech and expression under Articles 19(1)(a) and 19(2) of the Constitution of India, the book discusses, clause by clause, the development of law from colonial times to present-day controversies. Issues relating to public order, sedition, obscenity and pornography, hate speech, film and online censorship, privacy and defamation, the contempt of court, the nature of speech and the relationship between free speech and economic structure, and the inter-relationships between them have been comprehensively examined. As free speech campaigns gain intensity by the day, the book presents the myriad understandings and limitations of the free speech law, and suggests possible pathways for the future.

How does one view the cumulative work of one's life? For Gautam Bhatia, this publication is not merely a record of his personal or professional legacy, but rather it is a profound examination of his life in architecture. According to the author, architecture is, by its very nature, a practice of contradictions. It operates under influences from sociology, design, engineering, landscape, anthropology, urbanism and civic practice in order to impose its will on the nature of space. This publication brings together several of the author's built works, from commercial and residential buildings to large public spaces, from places of leisure to places of worship. Together with detailed essays, drawings and photographs, the author lays out his philosophy of design to illustrate how architecture became not just a conquest of the imagination, but also of reality. To physically will a building onto a site is an act of design, but to set it free onto a course of transformation is an act of architecture - into a realm beyond the present, where the space is not just made, but lives and dies. The author demonstrates how his practice became not just a tool for solving problems, but also a mode of personal expression, making this volume an invaluable resource for students and practitioners of architecture alike.