This book offers an innovative approach to studying 'judicial activism' in the Indian context in tracing its history and relevance since 1773. While discussing the varying roles of the judiciary, it delineates the boundaries of different organs of the State - judiciary, executive and legislature - and highlights the points where these boundaries have been breached, especially through judicial interventions in parliamentary affairs and their role in governance and policy. Including a fascinating range of sources such as legal cases, books, newspapers, periodicals, lectures, historical texts and records, the author presents the complex sides of the arguments persuasively, and contributes to new ways of understanding the functioning of the judiciary in India. This paperback edition, with a new Afterword, updates the debates around the raging questions facing the Indian judiciary. It will be of great interest to students and scholars of law, political science and history, as well as legal practitioners and the general reader.

This book offers an innovative approach to studying 'judicial activism' in the Indian context in tracing its history and relevance since 1773. While discussing the varying roles of the judiciary, it delineates the boundaries of different organs of the State - judiciary, executive and legislature - and highlights the points where these boundaries have been breached, especially through judicial interventions in parliamentary affairs and their role in governance and policy. Including a fascinating range of sources such as legal cases, books, newspapers, periodicals, lectures, historical texts and records, the author presents the complex sides of the arguments persuasively, and contributes to new ways of understanding the functioning of the judiciary in India. This paperback edition, with a new Afterword, updates the debates around the raging questions facing the Indian judiciary. It will be of great interest to students and scholars of law, political science and history, as well as legal practitioners and the general reader.

There can be no dispute that the judges of the high courts and the Supreme Court of India wield tremendous powers. However, power comes with a price which bestows huge responsibility and calls for strict adherence to dos and don'ts. This book builds upon this narrative and advocates that judges must be made accountable not only in respect of their personal conduct and integrity, but also in respect of the judicial verdicts they deliver. The work emphasizes that the need for judicial accountability has increased in recent times as the judiciary is, nowadays, performing not only judicial functions, but virtually executive functions also, for which the government is accountable to the people. The author, in particular, critically discusses Articles 141, 142, and 144, which make the Supreme Court the most powerful institution in the country, and Articles 32 and 136, which also confer wide powers on it. Using these powers, the apex court sometimes, unmindful of the budgetary and other vital implications, passes orders which are simply not implementable. For example, the intervention of the Supreme Court in the matter of the interlinking of rivers, a policy decision which falls clearly in the domain of the Executive. The book advocates the need for judicial accountability to save the institutions of justice from turning autocratic and narcissistic.