Justice Kannan's Legal speak

  Topical Context: A UK Bill Rekindles a Global Debate In June 2025, the United Kingdom’s House of Commons passed the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, reigniting a global conversation about euthanasia. The proposed law permits physician-assisted dying for mentally competent adults expected to live fewer than six months, subject to medical certification and oversight by a national panel. While the Bill is still awaiting House of Lords approval, it marks a bold legal and moral step that many Western countries have gradually embraced. India, however, stands at a different crossroads. While we have recognised passive euthanasia through a series of Supreme Court judgments— Aruna Shanbaug (2011), Common Cause (2018), and its procedural revision in 2023—we have consciously drawn a line against active euthanasia. Cultural values, institutional capacity, and socio-economic conditions make it unlikely that India can or should mirror the UK’s path. But that does not mean we sho...

      The Union Government acting through the President’s rejection of Tamil Nadu’s bill seeking exemption from NEET marks a defining moment—not just in federal politics, but in the battle for educational equity. Passed unanimously by the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly in 2021 and 2022, the bill reflected the State’s collective political and social consensus: that NEET, in its current form, has deepened structural inequalities in medical education. The President’s refusal to assent to the bill, acting on central advice, raises serious questions about the balance of power in our federal structure. But more urgently, it compels us to ask: is NEET serving its purpose—or is it perpetuating privilege under the guise of merit? Curriculum Mismatch and State Board Disadvantage NEET’s alignment with the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) syllabus has systematically disadvantaged students from the Tamil Nadu State Board (TNSBSE). Before NEET was imposed, TNSBSE students a...

  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 ...

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...

Basic structure of the Constitution, is it sufficient guarantee to preserve its ideals? Positioning judiciary Fewer institutions in the world are as strong as Indian Courts. Both in terms of performance and non-performance, Indian courts occupy the highest positions. To-day there are a 4.64 million cases pending all across India in all the High Courts. We have disposed of 124,960 in just one month in February 2010. There are 31.86 million cases pending in all district and taluk level courts and we have disposed of 1.51 million cases just last month. The Supreme Court has 60,469 cases pending on 1.3.2020. Courts vie with politicians in hogging the headlines in both print and electronic media. The basic structure doctrine of what the Supreme Court as articulated puts the judiciary at a high pedestal to look up to know what the desideratum is, the irreducible minimum as it were, on what the constitutional architecture rests on.   It is a manner of understanding how the legislat...