Now is not the moment

In hot pursuit of truth

Introduction Look at a world where the assumptions are: All lawyers lie; auditors fudge accounts; civil contractors use substandard materials; corporate hospitals loot; doctors are negligent; politicians plunder; shopkeepers cheat. The boast however is, ’Only I am different. I do not do any wrong but others do.’ If we must limit our analysis to what pervades our courts in our search for truth and justice, we will come by a shocking revelation that very few believe truth is attainable. The judicial system is not engineered to securing truth at all times. The provisions for reviews before the same court and appeals and revisions in higher forums are attempts to substitute what the first court found as true or just to something of what you believe to be true or just. If the appellate court reverses the judgment on a question of fact, it, in effect, finds error in what the lower court found as true. If a further appeal restores the first court's finding, it means that the 1st...

RIGHT TO PRIVACY

First use of the expression Warren and Brandeis wrote more than a century back that privacy is the "right to be let alone", and focused on protecting individuals. This approach was a response to then technological developments of the time, such as photography, and sensationalist journalism, also known as yellow journalism. A right to privacy is also explicitly stated under Article 12 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. " No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honor and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks." Was privacy right known to ancient Bharat? When Puttaswamy traces most of the issues identified as protecting right to privacy to the West, there is also an attempt to indigenise the concept, which in the same judgment Justice Chandrachud incidentally refers to an article published in ...

Constitution Day Address at Law College, VIT University

Seventy ago on November 26, the Constitution of India was adopted by the Constituent Assembly. The Preamble to the Constitution of India bears testimony to the historic occasion. However, the Constitution was only partially adopted that day. The full adoption came two months later on January 26, 1950 - the day is celebrated as the Republic Day to mark the anniversary of occasion. Post Emergency, after the then Janata party also failed to hold on to the government at the centre, there were strong waves of introspection of the situation that gave place to emergency. The flagrant violations of human rights at that time, the ADM Jabalpur decision during emergency when the Court infamously said that there was no right to life at all when there was emergency in operation, the memory of supersession of judges and when A.N.Ray was appointed as CJI because three other judges who delivered the Kesavanada verdict were found as not towing the government's policies and the obvious affront t...

Justice Kannan's Legal speak

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