scholarly journals Public Interest Litigation: A Conceptual Framework

2010 ◽  
pp. 85-89
Author(s):  
Manas Ranjan Samantaray ◽  
Mritunjay Sharma
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Public Interest ◽  
Good Governance ◽  
Fundamental Rights ◽  
Access To Justice ◽  
Special Role ◽  
Public Interest Litigation ◽  
Supreme Court Of India ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The Government

Public interest litigation (PIL) has a vital role in the civil justice system in that it could achieve those objectives which could hardly be achieved through conventional private litigation.PIL, for instance, offers a ladder to justice to disadvantaged sections of society, provides an avenue to enforce diffused or collective rights, and enables civil society to not only spread awareness about human rights but also allows them to participate in government decision making. PIL could also contribute to good governance by keeping the government accountable. This article will show, with reference to the Indian experience, that PIL could achieve these important objectives. However, the Indian PIL experience also shows us that it is critical to ensure that PIL does not become a facade to fulfil private interests, settle political scores or gain easy publicity. Judiciary in a democracy should also not use PIL as a device to run the country on a day-today basis or enter the legitimate domain of the executive and legislature. The challenge for states, therefore, is to strike a balance in allowing legitimate PIL cases and discouraging frivolous ones. One way to achieve this balance could be to build in economic (dis)incentives in PIL and also confine it primarily to those cases where access to justice is undermined by some kind of disability. Judiciary, being the sentinel of constitutional statutory rights of citizens has a special role to play in the constitutional scheme. It can review legislation and administrative actions or decisions on the anvil of constitutional law. For the enforcement of fundamental rights one has to move the Supreme Court or the High Court’s directly by invoking Writ Jurisdiction of these courts. But the high cost and complicated procedure involved in litigation, however, makes equal access to jurisdiction in mere slogan in respect of millions of destitute and underprivileged masses stricken by poverty, illiteracy and ignorance. The Supreme Court of India pioneered the Public Interest Litigation (PIL) thereby throwing upon the portals of courts to the common man. Till 1960s and seventies, the concept of litigation in India was still in its rudimentary form and was seen as a private pursuit for the vindication of private vested interests. Litigation in those days consisted mainly of some action initiated and continued by certain individuals, usually, addressing their own grievances/problems. Thus, the initiation and continuance of litigation was the prerogative of the injured person or the aggrieved party. However, these entire scenario changed during Eighties with the Supreme Court of India led the concept of public interest litigation (PIL). The Supreme Court of India gave all individuals in the country and the newly formed consumer groups or social action groups, an easier access to the law and introduced in their work a broad public interest perspective.

Enforcing Rights against the State in India

2019 ◽  
pp. 211-279
Author(s):  
Florian Matthey-Prakash
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Public Interest ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
The State ◽  
Access To Justice ◽  
District Courts ◽  
Public Interest Litigation ◽  
High Courts ◽  
The Supreme Court

Chapter 4 deals with the issue of lack of access to justice and attempts to find reasons for the inaccessibility of the higher judiciary. While it appears to be clear to observers that the Supreme Court and high courts are not accessible enough, surprisingly, there are actually no empirical studies that examine why this is the case. Some factors can, however, be deduced from a study dealing with the inaccessibility of district courts, that is, the lower judiciary.The fourth chapter also shows that the institution of Public Interest Litigation, for various reasons, cannot compensate for lack of access to justice, and that the state is not properly implementing (or not at all exploring) many other possible alternative mechanisms.

scholarly journals The Supreme Court of India: A People’s Court?

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sital Kalantry
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Fundamental Rights ◽  
Access To Justice ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Common People ◽  
Supreme Court Of India ◽  
The People ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The Rich ◽  
To Come

The Supreme Court of India has long been thought of as a court for the common people. This perception is rooted in the Indian constitution, which grants the Supreme Court original jurisdiction to hear cases alleging violation of fundamental rights. The Court has also embraced this vision of its role, and conceives of itself as an institution of “last resort for the oppressed and bewildered.” In a judgment from 1987, it expressly notes that it gives greater access to certain marginalized groups:this Court has always regarded the poor and the disadvantaged as entitled to preferential consideration than the rich and the affluent, the businessmen and the industrialists. The reason is that the weaker sections of Indian humanity have been deprived of justice for long, long years: they have had no access to justice on account of their poverty, ignorance and illiteracy. . . . The majority of the people of our country are subjected to this denial of access to justice and, overtaken by despair and helplessness, they continue to remain victims of an exploitative society where economic power is concentrated in the hands of a few and it is used for perpetuation of domination over large masses of human beings. This court has always, therefore, regarded it as its duty to come to the rescue of these deprived and vulnerable sections of Indian humanity in order to help them realise their economic and social entitlements and to bring to an end their oppression and exploitation.The Court’s self-conscious pro-poor discursion is most evident in its public interest jurisprudence, through which the Court removed many procedural barriers to accessing the Court; and assumed wide ranging remedial powers to ameliorate a range of socio-economic injustices.

scholarly journals Public Interest Litigation: Economic Implications (A Critical Appraisal of Reko DIQ Case)

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 63-71
Author(s):  
Dr. Barkat Ali ◽  
Dr. Hafiz Aziz-ur-Rehman
Keyword(s):  
Public Interest ◽  
Judicial Review ◽  
Fundamental Rights ◽  
Economic Policies ◽  
Islamic Republic ◽  
Public Interest Litigation ◽  
Economic Implications ◽  
Judicial Intervention ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The Government

Public Interest Litigation (PIL), a discretionary constitutional jurisdiction is, indeed, a constitutional mandate for preserving socio-economic and legal justice in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan (Pakistan). Such PIL objectives are focused  through the protection of fundamental rights of public importance under provisions of Article 184(3) of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, 1973(Constitution, 1973). Though the Supreme Court of Pakistan (SC) has been vigilant while exercising judicial review powers as modus operendi for PIL, sometimes it is engaged, however, in the disguise of protection of fundamental rights, in the domain of other branches of the government. Even, such involvement has been extended to the matters of economic policies, which as a general principle of judicial review jurisprudence should be retrenched from judicial review jurisdiction. This trend has not only distorted the PIL objectives, it has influenced the socio-economic development which eventually affects the fundamental rights. Economic policies being of technical nature needs to be decided and supervised by the bodies concerned instead of the judicial intervention which is not appropriate. Judicial overlook of this fact may cause serious economic implications as it has occurred in the Reko Diq matter as decided in the case of Maulana v. Government (2013). The appraisal of exercising of PIL jurisdiction in this case demonstrates that 'judicial capital' is of no use, in the economic matters, and expanding its political capital in such matters eventually influences public interest. So, it is concluded that the matter relating to economic policies should be considered non-justiciable, and be denied from taking judicial cognizance.

Invisible Inequalities

2019 ◽  
pp. 299-345
Author(s):  
Shomona Khanna
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Working Conditions ◽  
Public Interest ◽  
Public Interest Litigation ◽  
The Public ◽  
Supreme Court Of India ◽  
National Movement ◽  
Public Campaign ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Lower Castes

Started in 1997, Safai Karmachari Andolan (SKA) is a national movement for eradicating the practice of manual scavenging—an occupation which involves cleaning of dry latrines with tin plates and brooms and carrying of human excreta by members of lower castes. The SKA has been leading the public campaign to destroy illegal dry latrines and for the proper implementation of the Employment of Manual Scavengers and Construction of Dry Latrines (Prohibition) Act, 1993. In 2003, SKA, with 18 other organizations, filed a public interest litigation petition in the Supreme Court of India seeking eradication of manual scavenging, liberation of all manual scavengers from their degrading jobs, and initiation of measures for their rehabilitation. The SKA also works for the dignity and better working conditions for sanitation workers such as sewage workers, pit workers, and sweepers. This chapter seeks to record the work of SKA including its influence on the law and policymaking process.

‘Using’ Crisis of Governance as an Opportunity for ‘Re-invention’: Why the Supreme Court of India Took To Hearing Public Interest Litigations—A Case Study

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 215-223
Author(s):  
Subrata Biswas
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Public Interest ◽  
Good Governance ◽  
Positive Role ◽  
Indian Politics ◽  
Supreme Court Of India ◽  
The People ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The Right

What do the different State organs do when they face a crisis? Do the suffering institutions successfully re-invent themselves or is it that some other institution uses the crisis to find an ‘opportunity’ to re-invent itself? Can one’s crisis be another’s opportunity? This case-study analyses how the Supreme Court of India (hereinafter SCI) reinvented itself in a bid to further the cause of good governance in the country ever since emergency had been clamped on the nation towards the end of 1970s. Surely there has been a crisis of governance in India, caused by the pathetic performance of both the legislature and the executive. It has led to myriad problems in both social and political arenas. If left unaddressed, Indian people might have turned more violent than they already are and that could have perpetrated a failure of democracy in the country. But the SCI has successfully played a positive role in this regard. If the other institutions have failed the people, the Supreme Court has championed their cause. The world’s largest democracy stands saved until now. But is it wholly the judges’ heartfelt concern for the people that has prompted the Supreme Court to function in this fashion? Did anything go wrong during the emergency? Why is it that it has been more and more active ever since the emergency ended? And why is it that there has been an exponential growth in public interest litigations (hereinafter PILs) in the Supreme Court even though it cannot handle so many cases because of infrastructural paucities? Situating itself in the specific context of PILs entertained by the SCI and supporting it with the theoretical inputs of the so-called ‘principal-agent framework’, this essay argues that there has been a competition (i.e., between the court and the elected politicians) for ‘occupying’ more space in the domain of governance since the inception of the Constitution and it is only the Supreme Court that got the right ‘opportunity’ to achieve its objective in the wake of crisis in governance that became so visible in Indian politics ever since the fag-end of the 1970s. While the court tried other instruments earlier in its game plan vis-a-vis the elected politicians, the crisis situation since the end of the 1970s made it ‘invent’ a new tool in the form of PILs capable of safeguarding the interests of the people and insulating them against the mindless functioning of multiple state agencies. But how far can the SCI (hereinafter SCI) proceed with this new tool? Is there a risk of ‘overusing’ it? Does the court not have its own limitations in this regard, too? What should the Supreme Court do in order to avert a fresh ‘crisis’?

Judicial Discretion as Political Choice: The Supreme Court of Canada's Costs Awarding Power

2018 ◽  
Vol 51 (4) ◽  
pp. 929-947
Author(s):  
Emmanuelle Richez ◽  
Erin Crandall
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Public Interest ◽  
Original Data ◽  
Access To Justice ◽  
Judicial Discretion ◽  
Supreme Court Of Canada ◽  
Discretionary Power ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Public Interest Litigation ◽  
The Supreme Court

AbstractThis article analyzes an important discretionary power of the Supreme Court of Canada, the ability to award costs. With the use of an original data set, we explore trends in costs awarding in public interest litigation at the Supreme Court from 1970 to 2012. Our findings suggest that, over time, the Court has tended to favour nongovernment parties over government parties where the former are less likely to pay costs when they lose and more likely to receive costs when they win. In these cases, costs orders were more likely to benefit public interest litigants, such as nongovernmental organizations, than individual litigants and businesses. Together, these findings suggest a sensitivity to access to justice concerns when making costs orders, though some may argue that this sensitivity by the Court does not extend far enough.

DEKADENSI PEMILIHAN HAKIM AGUNG OLEH DPR RI

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-104
Author(s):  
Rustam Magun Pikahulan
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
House Of Representatives ◽  
Good Governance ◽  
Constitutional Court ◽  
Due Diligence ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Institutional Status ◽  
The Government

Abstract: The Plato's conception of the rule of law states that good governance is based on good law. The organization also spreads to the world of Supreme Court justices, the election caused a decadence to the institutional status of the House of Representatives as a people's representative in the government whose implementation was not in line with the decision of the Constitutional Court. Based on the decision of the Constitutional Court No.27/PUU-XI/2013 explains that the House of Representatives no longer has the authority to conduct due diligence and suitability (elect) to prospective Supreme Judges proposed by the Judicial Commission. The House of Representatives can only approve or disapprove candidates for Supreme Court Justices that have been submitted by the Judicial Commission. In addition, the proportion of proposed Supreme Court Justices from the judicial commission to the House of Representatives (DPR) has changed, whereas previously the Judicial Commission had to propose 3 (three) of each vacancy for the Justices, now it is only one of each vacant for Supreme Court Judges. by the Supreme Court. The House of Representatives no longer has the authority to conduct due diligence and suitability (elect) to prospective Supreme Judges proposed by the Judicial Commission. The House of Representatives can only "approve" or "disagree" the Supreme Judge candidates nominated by the Judicial Commission.

Fundamental Rights in the Indian Constitution: Could it include ‘Right to Sanitation’?

2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (6) ◽  
pp. 291-296
Author(s):  
Anil Kumar Mohapatra
Keyword(s):  
Fundamental Rights ◽  
Safe Drinking Water ◽  
Right To Life ◽  
Personal Liberty ◽  
Sanitation Facility ◽  
Supreme Court Of India ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The World ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Right

Long before India gained independence, M.K. Gandhi remarked that the availability of Sanitation facility is more important than gaining Independence for an Indian. Of late, it is now increasingly felt and realized in India that facilities like toilet, safe drinking water, accompanied by good hygienic conditions are fundamental necessities of a person. These are prerequisites of social and economic justice and genuine development. The Supreme Court of India in one judgement held that Right to life and personal liberty, should include right to privacy and human dignity etc. Despite that it has been an admitted shame that India still has the largest number of people defecating in open in the world. There are reported incidences of rape and murder of women in many places in India as women rely on open field for attending to the call of nature in morning and evening. The attempts like Community toi-let system, pay-and-use toilet system and schemes like ‘Mo Swabhiman -Mo Paikhana’ have been found to be less effective. In this connection the ‘Clean India Mission’ campaign launched by the Government of India in 2014 has been regarded as a right approach in that direction. Government of the day is actively considering the demand to convert the Right to Sanitation from a developmental right to a fundamental right. It would make the state more accountable and responsible. Against this background, the paper argues that spending huge money on that would yield good dividend in future for the country.

scholarly journals PENGAKUAN TERHADAP PIHAK NON-ADVOKAT DALAM PEMBERIAN BANTUAN HUKUM (Politik Hukum Bantuan Hukum Dalam Peraturan Perundang-Undangan Di Indonesia)

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 399
Author(s):  
Akmal Adicahya
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Access To Justice ◽  
State Law ◽  
Legal Aid ◽  
Procedural Law ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Right ◽  
Law Student

Access to justice is everyone rights that have to be fulfilled by the government. The regulation number 16 year 2011 of legal aid is an instrument held by the government to guarantee the right. The regulation allowed the participation of non-advocates to provide the legal aid. Through this policy, government emphasizes that:1) Indonesia is a state law which legal aid is an obliged instrument; 2) the prohibition of non-advocate to participate in legal aid is not relevant due to inadequate amount of advocate and citizen seek for justice (justiciabelen), and the advocate is not widely extended throughout Indonesia; 3) Non-Advocates, especially lecturer and law student are widely spread; 4) there are no procedural law which prohibits non-advocate to provide a legal aid. Those conditions are enough argument for government to strengthen the participation of non-advocates in providing legal aid. Especially for The Supreme Court to revise The Book II of Guidance for Implementing Court’s Job and Administration.Keywords: legal aid, non-advocate, justice

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