JUSTICE AND LINGUALISM: MESSAGE LOST IN INTERPRETATION

Each day I find a new judgment of the Supreme Court, breaks its own record of pages, writes too voluminously to be read by an ordinary mind like me. I have read somewhere a story about Swami Vivekananda who had to write a letter to his friend, but that letter was slightly long than expected. In the last paragraph of his letter he regretted with this statement, "I am sorry for this long letter. I don't have time to write a short one"! Writing something important in few words is an art which is learnt not in few days. In post-modern society discourses are like bubbles which remain for the time a new story replaces it with flourishing convictions. World Netizens, in a Cybernetics World love to express thoughts in few words; emoji expresses there more convincingly than sudden meetings of two strangers! Between these two extreme poles, an Aristotelean "golden mean" is desirable for the sake of avoiding "epysto-suicide" (Epysto-suicide here means a fatal strategy to write for the sake of writing).

It is a noticeable fact that the Apex Court has immense burden to dispense justice for more than one Billion people; especially knowing the fact that it is one and only court in the world who has oceanic jurisdictions; some are authorised through the Constitution from the very beginning, and others are resulted through innovative "Demosprudential Leadership". (Here I'm referring Upendra Baxi, Demosprudence v. Jurisprudence). Justice as a primordial virtue gets affected once the very means of communication creates a situation of Wittgensteinean linguistic limitation of justiciability. Big judgments are often seen to be misread and mis-interpreted by its stakeholders, sometimes it becomes desirable to clarify certain points in due course of time. Aadhaar Judgment has undoubtedly dispelled many a dark spots of curiosity and so created even more for the future to come.

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Meeting Justice Rohinton Nariman in a Sunday Morning

Aristotle once wrote in his Nicomachean Ethics that there are four significant virtues for human beings, namely Prudence, Temperance, Justice, and Courage. There are a few judges who have courage and sense of justice, both. Hon'ble Mr. Justice Rohinton Nariman has been truly an exemplar judge and erudite historian, theologian and philologist, a great scholar of music as well as a courageous and meticulous jurist of our country. He did his Master of Laws from Harvard Law School in 1980-81 and taught by one of the finest jurists of the last century, Roberto Unger. He became Senior Advocate in 1993 in the age of 37 and also served as Solicitor General of India in 2011 before he was elevated as a judge of the Supreme Court of India in 2014. He delivered many landmark judgments, including Shreya Singhal v. Union of India. There are a few people with whom time moves too fast, but to count that experience takes ages. Justice Rohinton Nariman is one of those great jurists with whom a meet

Same Sex Marriage Verdict: Apolitical Politics of Court

Every judgment of the Constitutional court solves and unsolves certain fundamental questions. Court often takes two steps forward and one step backward (Shklar). Navtej Johar was rightly celebrated as a progressive judgment which recognised same sex relationships on the touchstone of constitutional morality. In a way, judgment progressively explored the colonial and post-colonial politics and reviewed Section 377, IPC from the perspective of constitutional morality emanating from the "objective purposive interpretation", a concept devised by Justice Aharon Barack, a former judge of Israel Supreme Court. NALSA judgment already went ahead with the recommendations to broaden the scope of reservation policy in India to allow the constitutional protection of sexual minorities. The latest judgment has attracted widespread criticism from the intellectuals. Many of them have argued that the Court has not taken its responsibility in protecting the rights of sexual minorities. There i

The Rhythm of Law: A Book Review

Book Cover of the Book Law is the subject and object of curiosity since the ancient civilizations started its journey of contemplation about the order within the nature; its mysterious paths inspired the germination of metaphysics. Initially, human's mode of existence lived as instinctual life as per the call of nature. Instincts were primarily used as a medium for survival and to receive the call of wisdom from the “order of nature”. Humans are primarily one of the modes of expression of the nature, as Spinoza calls it attributes which express the essence of God and modes which are derived from the essence of God or nature (Spinoza, Ethics). The doorway of all the laws, as brooding presence of harmony, may be received if one is alert to recognize its call. Prof. Raman Mittal has penned a beautiful book titled “The Rhythm of Law”. The uniqueness of the book is its potentialities to express the inexpressible wisdom. Martin Heidegger in his Magnum Opus, Being and Time, expresses the

BEING AND BECOMING

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