Tag: Basic Structure Doctrine
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Chintan Chandrachud: Debating the NJAC Judgment of the Supreme Court of India: Three Dimensions
Over a week has passed since the Supreme Court of India, in what will most commonly be described as the ‘fourth judges case’, struck down a constitutional amendment and a law enacted by Parliament seeking to reform the process of judicial appointments to the Supreme Court and High Courts. The amendment attempted to replace the…
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Isaam Bin Haris: Judicial Review of Constitutional Amendments – Pakistan’s Uneasy Subscription to the Basic Structure Doctrine
The basic structure doctrine––first espoused by the Supreme Court of India in the celebrated case of Kesavananda Bharati v State of Kerala––allows courts to invalidate constitutional amendments on the premise that there are substantive implied limits on a legislature’s power to amend the Constitution. The doctrine is a somewhat controversial example of the successful migration…
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Derek O’Brien: The Basic Structure Doctrine and the Courts of the Commonwealth Caribbean
The basic structure doctrine, as first expounded by the Indian Supreme Court in the early 1970s in Kesavanand Bharati v Kerala (A.I.R. 1973 SC 1461), asserts that the law-making powers of a legislature are not unlimited in as much as they do not extend to altering the ‘basic structure’ of the constitution. Some 40 years…