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Judicial and Legislative Process

LL.M. · 20 topics in 5 units

Past question papers for Judicial and Legislative Process

Unit I 4 topics

  1. The nature of the judicial process: Cardozo and the common law modelWhat judges actually do when they decide a case: Cardozo's four methods, the common law model set against the civil law model, and what changes when the text being applied is a Constitution.7 min
  2. Theories of the judicial role, judicial creativity and judicial policyDeclaratory, realist, positivist and interpretive accounts of what judges do; the tools by which courts create law; and what is meant by judicial policy.7 min
  3. Legal reasoning, the growth of law and the balance of stability and changeThe judicial process as an instrument of social ordering; Levi's reasoning by example, Stone's categories of illusory reference and MacCormick's justification; how the common law keeps stable while it changes; and how law grows through reasoning under codes and statutes.7 min
  4. Precedent and stare decisis in India: Article 141Why a precedent directs future cases, what part of a judgment binds, how bench strength and per incuriam work under Article 141, and how India compares with England and the United States.6 min

Unit II 2 topics

  1. Judicial review: notions, foundations and theoriesWhat judicial review means, its origin in Marbury v. Madison, its textual and structural basis in the Indian Constitution, the standards of review, the main theories that justify or limit it, and how the Indian model compares with the American, British, German and French.6 min
  2. Prospective overrulingHow a court can change the law for the future without unsettling the past: the American origin, Golak Nath, the later extension of the doctrine in India, and the objections drawn from the declaratory theory.6 min

Unit III 4 topics

  1. Judicial activism and judicial restraintWhat activism and restraint mean, the theoretical case for each, the phases of the Indian Supreme Court, and the 2025 Governor-assent cases as a current illustration of the tension.7 min
  2. Public interest litigation: origins, doctrine and limitsHow Indian PIL relaxed standing and procedure, the remedies it invented, the critique from scholars and from the Court itself, and the guidelines now used to filter petitions.5 min
  3. Judicial independence and judicial accountabilityWhy independence and accountability are not opposites, the constitutional safeguards, the Judges cases and NJAC, and the mechanisms by which Indian judges answer for their conduct.5 min
  4. The political nature of the judicial process, the Indian debate on the judge's role, and structural challengesIn what sense the judicial process is political; the Indian debate from the Constituent Assembly through the supersessions and the 'committed judiciary' to Baxi and Dhavan; the institutional limits of courts; and the structural problems of pendency, vacancies, delay and access.6 min

Unit IV 5 topics

  1. Law-making in Parliament and the control of arbitrary legislationHow a Bill becomes an Act under Articles 107 to 111, the special cases of Money Bills, ordinances and assent, and the procedural and judicial checks by which Indian law-making guards against arbitrariness.6 min
  2. Delegated legislation: kinds, limits and controlThe kinds of subordinate legislation, the essential-function limit from the Delhi Laws Act case onward, parliamentary, procedural and judicial controls, and the comparative position in the UK and US.6 min
  3. Interpretation of statutes and the role of the legislatureThe literal, golden, mischief and purposive approaches as theories of the judge's relation to the legislature, the use of legislative materials, and how legislatures respond to judicial interpretation.8 min
  4. Law and public opinionDicey's account of how opinion shapes legislation, Savigny and the social-change school, Indian examples of law leading and following opinion, and how courts treat popular morality.5 min
  5. Legislation as a source of law: supreme and subordinate legislation, other sources, and social welfareLegislation as a source of law; Salmond's supreme and subordinate legislation and why Indian Parliament is supreme only in a limited sense; the relation of legislation to custom, precedent and juristic writing; legislation against precedent; and the role of legislation in social welfare and transformation.6 min

Unit V 5 topics

  1. Theories of justice and the Indian constitutional idea of justiceAristotle, utilitarianism, Rawls, Nozick and Sen on what justice requires, and how the Preamble, the Directive Principles and the courts give content to social, economic and political justice in India.6 min
  2. Legislative drafting: stages, structure and devicesThe steps by which a policy becomes a Bill, Thornton's five stages of drafting, the parts of an Indian Bill, the common drafting devices and the debate on plain language.5 min
  3. Legislative drafting: its nature, its history in England and India, and the diseases of languageWhat kind of activity legislative drafting is; the diseases of legal language (ambiguity, vagueness, generality, redundancy, legalese and the rest) and their cures; and the history of drafting from Coode and Thring in England to Macaulay's Law Commission and the Legislative Department in India.6 min
  4. The legislative draftsman; constitutional values, the General Clauses Act and interpretation as limits on draftingThe draftsman's role, skills, position, duties and relations with the government, the Legislative Department, Parliament and the public; and how the Constitution, the General Clauses Act, 1897 and the principles of statutory interpretation shape what the draftsman writes.7 min
  5. Drafting delegated legislation, the steps of drafting, and a drafting exerciseThe limits and cautions in drafting rules, regulations and notifications; the four steps of pre-draft preparation, drafting, deliberation and post-draft refinement; and a worked drafting exercise taking a policy to a short Bill and a rule, with the errors to avoid.7 min