Chief Justice of India Justice Surya Kant on Saturday said the challenge before courts is no longer choosing between conservation and development, but harmonising the two, as he traced India’s environmental jurisprudence from civilisational ethos to constitutional mandate. Addressing the inaugural session of the National Green Tribunal International Conference on “The Future of Environment and…
The Bombay High Court has held that a Child Welfare Committee (CWC) cannot exercise jurisdiction over a child who does not fall within the category of a “child in need of care and protection”, including a child who is neither orphaned nor abandoned. A Division Bench of Justice Urmila Joshi-Phalke and Justice Nivedita P. Mehta…
By Sanjay Raman Sinha Two recent cases have once again brought into sharp focus the uneasy equation between State power and the personal liberties guaranteed by the Constitution. The first concerns Akriti Chaudhary (24), a student detained under the National Security Act (NSA) in connection with the April 2026 workers’ protest in Noida. The second…
By Sujit Bhar An arrest is among the most serious powers available to the State. It takes away, at least temporarily, an individual’s liberty and places that person under the control of the police and, subsequently, the judiciary. Precisely because the power is so serious, the law does not leave an arrest to the discretion…
By Pawan Kumar A graduating law student’s answer to a question on biodiversity protection law was so incomprehensible that a judge in Prayagraj could not make sense of it. Nor could the advocate designated to evaluate the answer sheet when the matter eventually reached the Allahabad High Court. Ordinarily, that might have remained an unremarkable…
By Inderjit Badhwar There are summits that produce headlines, summits that produce declarations, and occasionally summits that reveal something larger than either. The 18th BRICS Summit in New Delhi belongs to the third category. At first glance, the familiar statistics tell the story: 11 member states, nearly 40 percent of global GDP, about half the…
By Annunthra Rangan The 18th BRICS Summit, held at Bharat Mandapam on September 12-13, ended a year in which India held the grouping’s chairmanship for the fourth time—and BRICS marked two decades since the acronym first appeared in a Goldman Sachs research note. Eleven member states signed a 140-paragraph New Delhi Declaration, representing close to…
Can a minor enter into a contract under Indian law? Or, to put it more directly, can a 13-year-old enter into a contract with a digital or social media platform by simply clicking “I agree”? This was the question before the Supreme Court bench headed by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant, with Justices Joymalya…
There are certain legal clichés that judges—and lawyers, journalists and citizens—like to repeat. Bail is the rule, jail the exception. Justice delayed is justice denied. And, with a weary shrug, the wheels of justice grind exceedingly slowly. But what happens when those wheels appear to have stopped altogether? On September 13, Umar Khalid completed six…
Former Supreme Court judge Justice Abhay Oka has called upon the Bar Council of India (BCI) to take action against lawyers who speak to the media about their arguments in ongoing cases, observing that such conduct could amount to self-promotion and attract restrictions on advertising and solicitation under the BCI Rules. Speaking at a “Discourse…