The increase in the number of civil cases in a country is its social mascot, as it symbolises the abundance of law abiding civilised citizens accepting the authority of the judiciary to get their grievances redressed. Otherwise, they would have turned to self-retaliation or employed roughnecks, a usual practice in America and Britain enkindled by their criminal heritage, to enforce justice in their own way; hence all civil litigants may...

Even a cursory glance at the daily newspaper reveals the economic mindset and the manipulation of that mindset into losing its sense of balance and well-being by the plethora of reports, articles and stories on the economic life of the Indian nation. There are all sorts of stories, statistics, credit appraisals, banking trends, FDI investment couched in the jargon of the modern economy that, curiously enough, seems to be so...

In most cases, the gravest threats to the human rights of citizens emanate from states.  The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, signed on December 10, 1948, transformed an aspiration into legally binding standards and spawned a raft of institutions to scrutinise government conformity and condemn noncompliance. It remains the central organising principle of global human rights and a source of power and authority on behalf of victims. A human right, owed...

It was to be a somber memorial, a remembrance of those who perished in a lethal milky fog. To mark the 25th anniversary of the world's worst industrial disaster, authorities planned to open up the now-dilapidated shell of the Union Carbide fertilizer plant, where in the wee hours of December 3, 1984, 40 tons of methyl isocyanate gas oozed out onto the sleeping city of Bhopal, India. About 4,000 people died instantly...

Judges should be made of sterner stuff and should not recuse themselves merely to preserve an appearance of non-bias when there is no real possibility of bias.  Four recent cases in the Supreme Court have raised the question of when a judge, who has either a pecuniary interest in the litigation or non-pecuniary connection with a party to the litigation, should recuse himself from a case. In the first case,...