Preamble Socio-Legal Concepts under Preamble

Every Indian school assembly has recited it, yet hardly anyone asks what it is for. Is the Preamble a law, like the Articles that follow? Can a court strike down an Act because it offends the word “socialist”? Can Parliament change a word of it? These questions reached the Supreme Court more than once, and the answers explain why a paragraph of about a hundred words carries so much weight in constitutional law.

In two minutes

The Preamble states who made the Constitution and what it aims to secure; the Supreme Court has held it to be part of the Constitution, a key to its interpretation, and amendable only without altering the basic structure.

The rest of this chapter

The full explanation, the cheat sheet, every previous-year question at every mark weight, the quiz and the answer skeletons are part of Constitutional Law – I on LexBlox Semester. Sign in to unlock the subject, or read Module 1 of Legal Language and Writing free.