-Frontline.in The British government, on the basis of an 1891 report on the subhuman living conditions of “Pariahs” by James H.A. Tremenheere, Acting Collector of Chengleput, assigned 12 lakh acres of land for distribution to the “depressed classes” of the Madras Presidency to empower them socially and economically. But more than 100 years later, much of this land is in the possession of non-Dalits, and the struggle to reclaim them has...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Supreme Court today decided to refer to a five-judge Constitution bench the question whether the right to free speech and expression includes "the right to insult another person's right to dignity". A bench of Justices Dipak Misra, A.M. Khanwilkar and M. Shantanagoudar asked senior advocates Harish Salve and Fali Nariman, assisting the court as amicus curiae, and a counsel for former Uttar Pradesh minister Azam Khan to...

-PTI The country’s largest prison Tihar has been asked by the Central Information Commission to develop a system of giving compensation to inmates who have been incarcerated for a duration more than their sentence period. The Commission has also directed the prison authorities to suo moto disclose the process of compensation to such prisoners as part of their obligation under the Right to Information Act. “Strangely the courts treated the MLA and the...

-Livemint.com Courts are finally protecting individual liberty in prohibition and beef ban cases The politics of alcohol consumption and cow slaughter have, of late, run roughshod over issues of constitutional law and philosophy. The Patna high court’s recent judgement on prohibition in Bihar—especially when read together with the Bombay high court’s earlier beef ban verdict—is a necessary redressal of the balance. These judgements are a nuanced look at how the relationship...

-TheWire.in The right to information and to education give the government the mandate to make policies that guarantee the delivery of educational resources to all. But the Copyright Act needs to be amended to strengthen fair use exceptions for educational purposes. Last August, the University of Maryland University College made an announcement that it had replaced its undergraduate textbooks with open educational resources (OER), thereby becoming the first university in the world...