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Rethinking Judicial Independence in India and Sri Lanka
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 August 2015
Abstract
The traditional narrative of judicial independence in India and Sri Lanka goes like this. The Indian Constitution established a strong and independent judiciary, which has become one of the most powerful in the world. By contrast, judicial independence was never entrenched in Sri Lanka due to insufficient constitutional safeguards and political interference. This paper seeks to challenge this narrative. It argues that despite important structural differences, India and Sri Lanka have followed similar judicial paths since the 1970s. Both judiciaries relaxed procedural requirements to allow sweeping public interest litigation; defined secularism and regulated religious practices in line with the dominant religious tradition; and largely deferred to the executive on the scope and necessity of emergency regulations. This remarkable convergence in jurisprudence demonstrates that (1) the Sri Lankan Supreme Court is more rights-protective and (2) its Indian counterpart is less willing to assert its independence on controversial issues than traditionally understood.
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Footnotes
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A.B. (Brown University); J.D. (Harvard Law School). Associate Professor of Law and Executive Director, Centre for Public Interest Law, Jindal Global Law School. I wish to thank Professor Andrew Harding and the Centre for Asian Legal Studies at the National University of Singapore for inviting me to present this paper at the 2013 Young Scholars Workshop. I also thank other participants at the Workshop for their constructive comments. Rohan Alva, Ananda Burra, Sujit Choudhry, Rohit De, Prashant Iyengar, Mathew John, Anna Lamut, Sarbani Sen, Arun Thiruvengadam, Deepika Udagama, Ashwini Vasanthakumar and Asanga Welikala offered helpful guidance and suggestions along the way and I am very grateful to them all. Finally, I thank V. Balaji, Rohan Krishnan, Didon Misri, Nisha Raman, and Shivangi Sud for excellent research assistance.
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