Law
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The UK’s Pension Bill Amendment is an Attack on Democratic Dialogue
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The UK government’s amendment to the Pensions Bill empowers the Secretary of State to issue guidance to administrators of public sector pension schemes to ensure that their investment decisions will not conflict with the government’s foreign and defence policy. None of the government’s justifications are convincing.
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Hyperlegality And Criminal Justice: How India Strips its Dissenters of their Human Rights and Constitutional Protections
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The Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1937 (UAPA) is India’s primary anti-terrorism legislation that is widely used by the government as a political tool to authorise rampant arbitrary arrests of any dissenter, protestor or social activist whose opinion is not in congruence with the ideological aspirations of the government. The illegality of such arbitrary arrests is…
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Returning to the State of Nature: The Hidden Deviousness within the Texas Abortion Law
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Since the Supreme Court ordered to uphold the New Texas Abortion Law last week – making abortion after the sixth week of pregnancy practically illegal – opponents have been concerned not only with the law’s unconstitutional content and its implications for women’s rights all over the country, but also with how the law successfully bypassed…
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Artificial Intelligence: Implications for human dignity and governance
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Nayef Al-Rodhan Recent years have seen a surge in discussions about the impacts of artificial intelligence (AI). These debates have predominantly featured issues related to autonomy in driverless cars, or the moral dilemmas of deploying ‘killer robots’, though the reach and impact of AI-based technologies is, of course, far more widespread. AI is a widely…
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Caliberating the moral contours of Indian religious freedom
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On 27th November 2020, the Governor of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh promulgated an anti-religious-conversion ordinance. This ordinance prohibits all unlawful conversions from one religion to another which take place by employment of any one or more than one of the following methods – misrepresentation, force, undue influence, allurement or by any fraudulent means…
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Conflict in Kashmir: Looking back as a warning for future
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The 6th of February 2021 marks the 37th anniversary of the murder of Ravindra Mhatre, an Indian diplomat killed in Birmingham, UK. His killing set the scene for the violent insurgencies in India-administered Kashmir from the late 80s onwards. The legal status of Kashmir has been at the heart of the Indian-Pakistan dispute since 1947 as a result of the countries’ shared colonial…
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Emerging Opportunities and Challenges in India’s Foreign Policy strategy in the Indo-Pacific
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Introduction Throughout the history of civilizations, the maritime domain has played a crucial role in establishing global and regional powers, and security architecture of geographical regions. The security umbrella established at the end of the Second World War in Indian and Pacific oceans remained unchallenged throughout the Cold War. However, the rise of China and…
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Bolsonaro’s Supreme Court pick baffles political commentators and supporters alike
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As the United States was embroiled in debates about Donald Trump’s supreme court nominee, tensions ran high in Brazil where Bolsonaro nominated a judge to the Supreme Federal Court (the ‘Supremo Tribunal Federal’ also known as the STF). However, while Trump’s pick, Judge Amy Coney Barrett, was criticized for her hard-liner conservatism, Bolsonaro’s, Judge Kássio…
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No Haste, No Hurry: The Dangers of Court-Packing the Federal Judiciary
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When confronted with FDR’s legislative proposal to expand and pack the Supreme Court with more sympathetic, pro-New Deal justices, U.S. Senator Henry F. Ashurt, the chair of the Senate Judiciary committee, replied “No haste, no hurry, no waste, no worry” and delayed the hearings, marking an essential check by Congress on the Roosevelt White House’s…
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Restitution of Conjugal Rights: An Anathema to Human Rights
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In March 2019, the Honourable Supreme Court of India admitted a writ petition[1] (Ojaswa Pathak v. Union of India) challenging the constitutionality of the remedy of restitution of conjugal rights present under multiple family laws including Section 9 of Hindu Marriage Act, 1955 (hereafter the Act). The question of law i.e. constitutionality of the remedy…