Rajeev Dhavan

The advocate representing Hindu Mahasabha submitted a pictorial identifying the spot of Lord Ram's birthplace at the disputed site.

The senior lawyer wrote that there are "some things fundamentally wrong with the court and its functioning", but he still "owes a lot to the Supreme Court and the judicial system,.. and have not repaid my debt

The SC upholds its order jailing Subrata Roy Sahara and slams "affronts, jibes and carefully and consciously planned snubs" by his lawyers

Governance has been abandoned to mob intimidation at the price of free speech. The law — even in its width — was intended to outlaw malicious speech, which intended disruption. Today the disrupters claim a sensitivity that they do not possess and a p

Manipulating textbooks for children is unacceptable. India has suffered enough communalism. Leave textbooks alone.

A schematic examination of Supreme Court judges, and their rivalries, takes the list till 1989, but ignores inner workings, motives and the disturbing present

Justice Karnan’s transgressions demanded a stern internal chastening. The Supreme Court’s use of its contempt power is worrying.

In a democracy, judges being disciplined by the executive is not an option because it defies the basic principle­ of separation of powers

If the Centre can function without President’s rule, surely the states too can. So why do we still have Article 356 in our Constitution?

A pre-poll PM candidate hurts the polity, promotes personality cult

Accounts like this are not only rare but essential. We need to know this seamy side of the law—first as anecdotal farce; then as discordant tragedy.

Congress and the judiciary—a crucial story that remains untold

Increasingly called upon to intervene in a host of issues, the Supreme Court has become sharply divided as it passes a series of historic judgements

The new privacy law may choke information    

Justice (retd) JS Verma tells Shekhar Gupta in the Indian Express that  something like what the outgoing CEC suggested  -- no post-retirement jobs from the government in power for  10 years for the CEC and ECs and prohibition on their joining any political party -- should apply even more to CJI, CEC, EC, SC judges and CBI directors

Rajeev Dhavan argues in the same paper that the Attorney General's role needs to be looked at afresh:

The AG is a constitutional office (article 76). He is the principal advisor and legal conscience-keeper of the Government... In 1962-63 when Ashok Sen tried to combine the offices of AG and Law Minister, he was rebuffed. Today, it could be argued that a de facto merger has taken place between Law Minister Bharadwaj and AG [Milon] Banerjee. It wasn’t always so: independent India’s first AG, M.C. Setalvad, chastised the government over the Mundhra deal, averring that he was accountable to the nation, not the government. He addressed Parliament on preventive detention in 1960 — and politicians listened. Fali Nariman resigned as Additional Solicitor General (ASG) in July 1975 when the Emergency was declared. In 1977, Soli Sorabjee as ASG defended Presidents Rule, but on 10 December 1989 reportedly told Krishnan Mahajan that he regretted doing so. Then he, as AG supported opening up Babri Masjid for Hindu prayer in March 2002, even though in 1994 he opposed this stance in the Babri Masjid case. In UP K.L. Mishra and in Bombay H.M. Seervai set standards for Advocate Generals, the comparable office at State level.

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