By Inderjit Badhwar
There is something profoundly unsettling about a State that refuses to stop litigating. Courts are meant to be spaces where citizens seek relief against excess, arbitrariness, or injustice. But what happens when the State itself becomes the most persistent, and often the most powerful, litigant?
In this issue, Prof Upendra Baxi offers a sharp and necessary provocation: to think of the State not merely as a dispenser of justice or a respondent to claims, but as a vexatious litigant. This framing is not rhetorical flourish. It points to a systemic condition—one where the State, armed with vast resources, repeatedly appeals, delays, and contests, often turning litigation into an instrument of endurance rather than resolution.
The consequences are not abstract. For the ordinary citizen, prolonged litigation against the State can mean years—sometimes decades—of uncertainty, financial strain, and emotional fatigue. Justice, in such contexts, risks becoming less about rights and more about resilience. Who can afford to wait? Who can afford to persist?
Prof Baxi’s intervention also compels us to rethink institutional responsibility. If the State is among the largest litigants in the system, then questions of judicial backlog, procedural delay, and access to justice cannot be addressed without scrutinizing governmental litigation practices. Why does the State appeal so routinely? What incentives sustain this culture of contestation? And where is the accountability when litigation itself becomes a form of governance?
At stake is the moral authority of the State. A government that litigates reflexively, rather than judiciously, risks eroding public trust. It transforms the courtroom from a site of redress into a theatre of attrition. The imbalance is stark: a citizen stands against an entity that can outspend, outlast, and outmanoeuvre.
The cover story this week is not merely about law; it is about power. It asks whether the State can—and must—exercise restraint in its legal battles. It invites us to imagine a jurisprudence of responsibility, where the State litigates not to win at all costs, but to uphold justice in both letter and spirit.
In reading Prof Baxi, we are reminded that the legitimacy of the State is not only forged in legislation or policy, but in how it conducts itself when challenged. The question, then, is urgent and enduring: when the State goes to court, does it seek justice—or simply victory?
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