Role of Judiciary in Protection of Human Rights in India

In 1979 a newspaper report about prisoners waiting years in Bihar jails for trials that never began ended up in the Supreme Court, and the Court did not turn it away because the prisoners were not the ones who had filed it. A student in Mumbai today can write to a High Court about a collapsed footpath or an unsafe factory and be heard. How did Indian courts become the place where ordinary people take human rights problems, and how far can they go without stepping into the legislature's role? That is the subject of this topic.

In two minutes

Indian courts protect human rights through judicial review, writs under Articles 32 and 226, a wide reading of Article 21, public interest litigation, compensation and guidelines, but their power is checked by the separation of powers and the difficulty of enforcing their own orders.

The rest of this chapter

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