The central aim of Constitution Database is to help students of law and common citizens to acquaint with a sense of what scholarship is being produced within the law but to also provide a limited sense of how scholars in other disciplines (especially political scientists) approach the subject – Constitutional Law and Governance. Although this resource is primarily aimed at public lawyers, it also aims to provide a way to bridge understanding between law and other disciplines in this area, as well as between academics and policymakers. For non-lawyers, this resource will hopefully provide a useful window into how thinking within legal scholarship is developing in this area.
[Note: The Resources Database provides a list of useful links to aid you in further reading and research. It is not intended to be exhaustive but suggestions for additions are most welcome: simply e-mail to us at [email protected]]
Books
- Andhyarujina & William Wade, Judicial activism and constitutional democracy in India
- Upendra Baxi, The Supreme Court and Politics
- Tarunabh Khaitan, The Theory of Discrimination Law
- Tripurdaman Singh, Sixteen Stormy Days: The Story of the First Amendment to the Constitution of India
- Ashok Desai, Supreme but not Infallible: Essays in Honour of the Supreme Court of India
- Madhav Khosla, India’s Founding Moment: The Constitution of a Most Surprising Democracy
- Choudhary, Khosla & Mehta, Oxford Handbook on Indian Constitution
- Rohit De, A People’s Constitution: The Everyday Life of Law in the Indian Republic
- Granville Austin, The Indian Constitution: Cornerstone of a Nation
- Granville Austin, Working a Democratic Constitution
- Gautam Bhatia, The Transformative Constitution: A Radical Biography in Nine Acts
- Justice V R Krishna Iyer, Constitutional Miscellany
- Justice O Chinnappa Reddy, The Court and the Constitution of India: Summits and Shallows
- Aakash Singh Rathore, Ambedkar’s Preamble: A Secret History of the Constitution of India
- Anuj Bhuwania, Courting the People: Public Interest Litigation in Post-Emergency India
- Gautam Bhatia, Offend, Shock, or Disturb: Free Speech under the Indian Constitution
- Abhinav Chandrachud, Republic of Rhetoric: Free Speech and the Constitution of India
- Shreya Atrey, Intersectional Discrimination
- Tom Bingham, The Rule of Law
- Abhinav Chandrachud, Due Process of Law
- K G Kannabiran, The Wages of Impunity: Power, Justice and Human Rights
- Nani Palkhivala, Our Constitution: Defaced & Defiled
- N.S. Ramnath, The Aadhaar Effect: Why The World’s Largest Identity Project Matters
- Sudhir Krishnaswamy, Democracy and Constitutionalism in India: A Study of the Basic Structure Doctrine
ANTI-CASTE READINGS
- Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, Annihilation of Caste, Access it here.
- Baby Kamble, The Prisons We Broke
- Suraj Yengde, Caste Matters
- Yashica Dutt, Coming out as a Dalit
- Kancha Ilaiah, Why I am not a Hindu
- Uma Chakravarti, Gendering Caste through a Lens of Feminist
- Baburao Bagul, When I Hid My Caste
- Sujata Gidla, Ants Among Elephants
- Daya Pawar, Baluta
- Urmila Pawar, The Weave of My Life: A Dalit Woman’s Memoir
- Ed. Sunaina Arya & Akash Singh Rathore, Dalit Feminist Theory: A Reader
- Sharmila Rege, Writing Caste Writing Gender: Narrating Dalit Women’s Testimonials
- Dr. B.R. Ambedkar & Kancha Ilaiah, Beef, Brahmin and Broken Men
- Anand Tembule, Republic of Caste
- Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, Conversion as Emancipation
- Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, The Untouchables: Who they were and why they become Untouchables
- Anand Tembule, The Persistence of Caste
- Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, What Congress and Gandhi has done to the Untouchables
- Mulk Raj Anand, Untouchable
- U. R. Ananthamurthy, Samskara: A Rite for a Dead Man, translated by A. K. Ramanujan
- Viramma with Josiane Racine and jean Luc Racine, Viramma: Life of an Untouchable
- Dag-Erik Berg, Dynamics of Caste and Law: Dalits, Oppression and Constitutional Democracy in India, Cambridge University Press
Case notes database
- In re Special Reference No. 1 of 1964 [Keshav Singh’s case] (Facts, On Advisory Jurisdiction, On questions of law)
- Prashant Bhushan Contempt Case (Facts)
- CISCO Law Suit (A case of Caste Discrimination in the US) (Analysis)
- Amit Sahni v. Union of India [Shaheen Bagh Protest Case] (Critical Analysis here)
- State of Bombay v. Narasu Appa Mali (Critical Analysis here)
- Refer to this link here for continuous updates.
Constitutionalism
- Chaitanya Singh, Executive Aggrandisement and Democratic Backsliding in India: A Conceptual Analysis, access it here.
- Minnah Abraham, Indian Constitution and Constitutionalism: Transformative Application, access it here.
- Tarunabh Khaitan, Executive Aggrandizement in Established Democracies: A Crisis of Liberal Democratic Constitutionalism, access it here.
- Nancy Bermeo, On Democratic Backsliding, access it here.
- Tarunabh Khaitan, Killing a Constitution with a Thousand Cuts: Executive Aggrandizement and Party-State Fusion in India, access it here.
- Jan-Werner Mueller, Populism and Constitutionalism, access it here.
- Sujit Choudhry, Madhav Khosla, and Pratap Bhanu Mehta, Locating Indian Constitutionalism, access it here.
- Tarunabh Khaitan, Political insurance for the (relative) poor: How liberal constitutionalism could resist plutocracy, access it here.
- Lord Cooke of Thorndon, The Constitutional Renaissance, access it here.
- The international IDEA Policy paper, Moving Beyond Transitions to Transformation: Interactions between Transitional Justice and Constitution-Building (University of Edinburgh), access it here.
Tenth Schedule/Defection
- Chaitanya Singh, Constitutional Crisis in Rajasthan: Analysing the role of Whip, access it here.
- Rohan Bhatnagar, Analyzing the Scope of Voluntary Forfeiture of Political Party Membership, access it here.
- Udit Bhatia, Cracking the whip: the deliberative costs of strict party discipline, access it here.
- Rajya Sabha, Role of the leader of the House, Leader of Opposition and Whip: Brief History, access it here.
- The Law Commission of India, 170th Report on Reform of the Electoral Laws (May 1999), access it here.
- Udit Bhatia, Guest Post: The Absence of Deliberative Democracy – The Fetters of the Anti-Defection Law, access it here.
- Gautam Bhatia, Anti-Defection and Expelled Members: Text, Structure, History, and Theory, access it here.
- Gautam Bhatia, Judicial Supremacy amid the Breakdown of Constitutional Conventions: What the Karnataka Controversy Tells Us about our Parliamentary Democracy, access it here.
- Vibhor Relhan, The Anti-Defection Law Explained, access it here.
- Sakshi Agarwal, Role of the Speaker Under Tenth Schedule, access it here.
- Csaba Nikolenyi & Shaul Shenhav, In Search of Party Cohesion: The Emergence of Anti-Defection Legislation in Israel and India, access it here.
- Jeet Chaudhuri, Whether Dissent Equals Defection in the Indian Parliament?, access it here.
Contempt of court [Article 129 and 215]
- Chaitanya Singh, Contempt of Court: Analysis of the Jurisdiction of an “infallible” Court, access it here.
- Mriganka Shekhar Dutta & Amba Uttara Kak, CONTEMPT OF COURT: FINDING THE LIMIT, access it here.
- FREEDOM OF SPEECH VIS-A-VIS CONTEMPT OF COURT, access it here.
- Gautam Bhatia, Addendum: Contempt and the Supreme Court’s Humpty Dumpty Jurisprudence, access it here.
- Gautam Bhatia, Free Speech and Contempt of Court – I, access it here.
- G. V. Mahesh Nath & Audhi Narayana Vavili, Contempt of Court and Free Expression – Need for a Delicate Balance, access it here.
- Olav Albuquerque, Free speech vs contempt of court, access it here.
- Thomas Luscher, Freedom of Speech and Press as a Limitation on the Contempt Power, access it here.
- Kamlesh Pandya, THE CONCEPT OF CONTEMPT OF COURT IN INDIA, access it here.
Jurisdiction of the Supreme Court
- Deepaloke Chatterjee, PRESIDENTIAL REFERENCES AND THEIR PRECEDENTIAL VALUE: A CONSTITUTIONAL ANALYSIS, access it here.
- Pooja Jha, Supreme Court’s Advisory Jurisdiction under Article 143, access it here.
LAW AND RELIGION
- Panya Mathur, Gender Equality or Religious Beliefs: Conflicting Rights?, access it here.
- Panya Mathur, The ‘Essentiality’ of the Essential Religious Practice Test: A Constitutional Paradox?, access it here.
- Tarunabh Khaitan & Jane Norton, Religion in human rights law: A normative restatement, access it here.
- Tarunabh Khaitan & Jane Norton, The right to freedom of religion and the right against religious discrimination: Theoretical distinctions, access it here.
- Daphna Hacker, Religious Tribunals in the Democratic States: Lessons from the Israeli Rabbinical Courts, access it here.
- Lori G. Beaman, Battles over Symbols: The “Religion” of minorities versus the “culture” of majority, access it here.
Dissents and protests in a democracy
- Brian Martin, Protest in a liberal democracy, access it here.
- Chaitanya Singh, Right to Protest, Restrictions and Democracy: Supreme Court and the Chilling Effect, access it here.
- Roland Bleiker, The Politics of Change: Why Global Democracy Needs Dissent, access it here.
- OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), Guidelines on Freedom of Peaceful Assembly, access it here.
- Supreme Court of India, Mazdoor Kishan Shakti Sangathan v. Union of India, access it here.
- Rajeev Bhargava, The right to protest in a free society, access it here.
- Justice (Retd.) Madan B. Lokur, Our Fundamental Rights to Free Speech and Protest Are Being Eroded and Mauled, access it here.
- Pratap Bhanu Mehta, The Dissenter as Criminal: Reflections on Dissent and the Law, watch it here.