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2002 research outputs found
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“Continuity without Cultivation”?: The Student Figure, Legal Education, and Writing Pedagogy in India
No full textThis paper reconstructs the historical figure of the student in India through the intertwined trajectories of writing pedagogy and legal education. Moving beyond the socio-political portrayal of students as agents of resistance or nation-building, it examines how the classroom can function as a dynamic site for meaning-making. Drawing on archival materials, including syllabi, composition manuals, and legal reform reports, the paper traces the role of English language education in shaping legal pedagogy from the colonial period to the establishment of contemporary National Law Universities. Situating these developments within broader debates in writing and composition studies, the paper proposes alternative pedagogical approaches—such as prioritising in-class writing, fostering silence, and employing contract grading— to reimagine the student. By emphasising process-oriented learning over external benchmarks, this paper contributes to a historical understanding of education with the student at its centre and argues for the classroom to be understood as a conceptual site of higher education in the country
Postscript
No full textAs the earliest Editor’s Notes for the Socio-Legal Review (‘SLR’ or ‘Review’) recorded, SLR was established in 2005 with the help of a publication grant from the UK-based Modern Law Review (‘MLR’), and the support of Professors Tim Murphy and later Martin Loughlin of the London School of Economics. A chance encounter that some students had with Professor Tim Murphy, at the time the General Editor for MLR and founding Editorial Board member for the UK-based journal Law and Critique, at an academic conference at the National Law School of India University, Bengaluru (‘NLSIU’) led to active discussions around what it would take to found a journal for the interdisciplinary study of law. As a former Editor who wrote one of these initial Notes, this Postscript is a brief personal reflection on SLR’s initial years (2005–2012) and an attempt to place some of those experiences and questions in a broader context
The Meaning and Challenges of an Interdisciplinary Sentencing Exercise: Reflections from a Death Penalty Mitigation Practice
No full textDue to the death penalty sentencing framework’s requirement of taking into account the context of the individual accused who is to be punished, the Supreme Court of India has characterised death penalty sentencing as socio-legal in nature. In this paper, we consider the tensions that have emerged when the legal is forced to interact with the social—when death penalty sentencing law, legal practice, and process has to account for perspectives from the social sciences. One of the mechanisms through which the law conducts this socio-legal examination at the stage of sentencing is mitigation. Mitigation is an exercise by the defence of collecting and analysing information on behalf of the accused to help courts decide the question of punishment. Mitigation borrows from the social sciences in constructing the individual for the law. We present our own experience of establishing a mitigation practice in death penalty cases in India and trace concerns that are revealed when social science disciplines engage with the law. In doing so, we borrow from the social sciences to etch out the contours of the core of the death penalty sentencing framework—culpability at sentencing and reformation—and reflect on the conflict which ensues. We conclude that while the struggle of this interdisciplinarity at the sentencing stage may be good, it may also mean that the search for complete accuracy in sentencing might be misplaced while raising important questions about the meaning of “consistency” in sentencing
Impact of Social Media Influencers (SMIs) on Consumer Choice: A Case Study of Reviews by YouTubers
No full textConsumer participation is vital for businesses, especially in online markets, because potential customers cannot physically check the product. One of the standard options is to watch the review on YouTube, a source of a host of information, including consumer-related products. However, it also provides a fertile ground for disseminating misinformation, including fake reviews of consumer goods, because the contents of the information are unverified. Fake reviews can create information asymmetry, lead to the dismissal of genuine reviews, and ultimately reduce market competition. Therefore, one would have expected that the popularity of YouTube would decrease as a source of information access. However, the number of users and reviewers is increasing daily. The factors that drive people to access more and more information from YouTube are easy to access and the influence of the reviewer. This study aims to examine the contents of YouTube videos by making a case study of reviews of a product and placing specific arguments for combating fake reviews
Editorial
No full textDrawing on select papers from the Pluralist Agreement and Constitutional Transformation (PACT) Conference, this first part of the PACT Special Issue recovers forgotten and unrecorded constitutional histories. The articles reflect on the constitutional archives as a source of historical writing and ask how they are constituted, studied, and challenged. In doing this, they explore the documentary record of India’s constitutional founding, question prevalent narratives, and uncover marginalised perspectives. This comprehensive engagement goes beyond orthodox legal scholarship and illustrates the university’s commitment to multidisciplinary research, with the first issue bringing together contributions from scholars of law, English literature, and political science
Cultivating Legalism from Paper Proofs: Analysing Everyday Forms of Claim Making by Van Gujjar Pastoralists in Uttarakhand
No full textScholarship from South Asia has often highlighted how subaltern peoples partake in social movements as figures of resistance but rarely analyse their techniques of working the law in their favour to negotiate citizenship with the state. Such modes of articulating claims through affective gestures and vernacular legalese foster plural meanings to otherwise rigid legal categories and dogmatic bureaucratic interpretation. This paper draws upon socio-historical and ethnographic accounts of Van Gujjars to highlight how these pastoralists utilise myriad forms of paper proofs and documentary evidence to engage in claim making across the forests of Uttarakhand. Through an articulation of everyday tactics with documents, engendering new paperwork, and recording environmental and spatial subjectivities, the Van Gujjars trouble commonplace assumptions of state-society relations and subaltern modes of articulation. These writing practices, we argue, represent a facet of mimetic sovereignty that allow Van Gujjars to navigate paradigms of state recognition in claiming indigeneity and reconstitute state making within forests
India Needs to Value Academic Freedom, Research in Humanities to Emerge as Power Centre
No full textWhy should academic freedom be of any concern to the public? This piece advocates for strengthening spaces for rigorous intellectual conversation in India. Focusing on the role of humanities research, it argues that critical and independent research augments democracies
Self-Defence under International Law: Lessons from the Israel-Gaza Conflict
No full textThe authors reflect on their experiences of teaching international law and human rights law in light of the ongoing Israel-Gaza conflict. Prompted by their students\u27 scepticism about the relevance of international law, the piece argues that the enforcement of international law is not a precondition for the existence of international norms . The authors go on to examine Israel\u27s claims to the right to self-defence and the response of the international community at large