India’s Supreme Court will be amenable to Modi

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
National Register ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Judicial Appointments ◽  
Chief Justice ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Religious Site

Subject Outlook for India's judiciary. Significance Sharad Arvind Bobde last month succeeded Ranjan Gogoi as chief justice. Before retiring from the Supreme Court, Gogoi announced verdicts in several important cases, including a dispute over a religious site in which the Court favoured a Hindu claimant. That particular outcome was a fillip for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, which strongly promotes majoritarian Hindu values. Impacts The Modi government will try to implement the National Register of Citizens across India, stoking religious tensions. The Supreme Court’s response to petitions challenging Modi’s Kashmir move will show how far it is willing to confront the executive. Obligation on the chief justice to disclose nominations for higher judicial appointments may breed greater confidence in India’s judiciary.

Indian opposition parties will disrupt parliament more

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
General Election ◽  
Government Policies ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Chief Justice ◽  
Bharatiya Janata Party ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Civil Violence ◽  
Opposition Parties

Subject Parliamentary disruptions and increasing riots in India. Significance Prime Minister Narendra Modi earlier this month led a public fast in protest at disruptions inside parliament, which cost the budget session nearly 250 hours in lost deliberations. While the Indian legislature’s role in holding the executive to account is curtailed, popular riots provide a means to challenge government policies. India’s general election is due in 2019, when Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will seek to retain power. Impacts Opposition parties’ attempts to have the Supreme Court chief justice impeached are unlikely to succeed. Spikes in civil violence are likely ahead of forthcoming state elections. The BJP and its allies may achieve a majority in the upper house after 2019, if Modi's party retains power.

Kenya court’s BBI rebuff may throw 2022 poll wide open

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Judicial Activism ◽  
Political Pressure ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Judicial Appointments ◽  
Chief Justice ◽  
The Supreme Court

Significance If the ruling stands, it would force authorities to abandon plans for a national referendum on the reforms. Impacts If the case reaches the Supreme Court, it will present a major test for new Chief Justice Martha Koome, setting the tone for her term. Criticisms in pro-government circles of alleged judicial activism will put increasing political pressure on senior judges. Politicisation of the judiciary’s role may encourage authoritarian leaders elsewhere to exert greater control over judicial appointments.

Appointments to the Supreme Court of Canada

2018 ◽  
pp. 231-241
Author(s):  
Peter McCormick
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Law School ◽  
Supreme Court Of Canada ◽  
Judicial Appointments ◽  
Canadian Experience ◽  
The Supreme Court

This essay traces the genesis of the Supreme Court of Canada under the Supreme Court Act of 1875, and the appointment procedure as described in it. The essay argues that the widening of the pool, where consultation for judicial appointments is made, has resulted in the appointment of persons with diverse credentials. The author describes how a reformed procedure for appointments involves the Prime Minister and the Minister of Justice consulting various Chief Justices, law school deans, and provincial justice ministers to solicit names of potential appointees. The Canadian experience demonstrates variations in appointment mechanisms for broad-based consultation even in the absence of a commission model. The author, however, rues that most innovations in the appointments process have been short-lived, with a general shift to a more secretive process for appointments.

From Kania to Sarkaria

2018 ◽  
pp. 3-17
Author(s):  
Suchindran B.N.
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Judicial Appointments ◽  
Chief Justice ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The 1960S

This essay is a critical analysis of the dynamics of executive-judiciary relations in judicial appointments from 1950 to 1973. It serves as a primer for the appointments made to the Supreme Court from 1950–73, the supersessions that were apprehended but did not come about, and generally, what weighed with the judges as well as the executive while making appointments in the years immediately after the Constitution came into force. The essay traverses the historical journey of appointments to the Supreme Court from the tenure of the first Chief Justice of India, Justice H.J. Kania, to the appointment of Justice R.S. Sarkaria in 1973. It provides insights, and in some cases, hitherto unknown facts about the factors that prompted the appointment of certain justices to the Court. The essay also documents the gradual incursion that the executive had begun to make in judicial appointments in the latter half of the 1960s.

Pakistan military will repel threats to its authority

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Senior Officers ◽  
The Military

Subject The Pakistan military's influence on domestic politics. Significance Parliament last month passed legislation extending the tenure of the current chief of army staff, General Qamar Javed Bajwa, for another three years. This followed a November ruling by the Supreme Court striking down an extension granted by Prime Minister Imran Khan's government. While Pakistan struggles to ease its economic woes and secure diplomatic support for its position on Kashmir, over which it disputes sovereignty with India, the politically powerful military is orchestrating efforts to mediate peace in Afghanistan and consolidate relations with key partners. Impacts The military will ensure that Khan remains in power, as it regards him as a suitably acquiescent prime minister. Most political parties will toe the military's line. Bajwa's likely successor as army chief, Faiz Hameed, may lack the charisma to command the same loyalty from senior officers.

Caste unrest will help Modi's party retain Dalit vote

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
The Political ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The North ◽  
Congress Party ◽  
Bharatiya Janata Party ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Caste Politics

Subject Caste politics in India. Significance In a sign of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ability to shape the political agenda, the National Democratic Alliance's candidate Ram Nath Kovind was sworn in as India's 14th president on July 25. With attacks on Dalits (low castes) in the north Indian heartlands of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) surging, the nomination of a Dalit for the presidency was designed to strengthen the party's appeal to the community ahead of state elections. Impacts Support for the main opposition Congress party among Dalits will decline in Gujarat. Beef and leather exports will fall despite the Supreme Court suspending the ban on trading cattle for slaughter. Anti-Muslim violence may increase across the country.

Cambodia’s main opposition could split

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Content Type ◽  
National Assembly ◽  
People's Party ◽  
Lower House ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Trade Sanctions

Subject Cambodia's banned opposition. Significance The National Assembly last month passed an amendment to a law on political parties, enabling the prime minister to request the king to lift court-imposed bans on politicians. Prime Minister Hun Sen’s Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) won all 125 seats in parliament’s lower house in last July’s election. The Supreme Court in November 2017 dissolved the main opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) and gave 118 senior party officials five-year bans from politics. Impacts Indicted CNRP leader Kem Sokha could receive a royal pardon as part of efforts to appease foreign critics. EU trade sanctions will hit Cambodia’s export-oriented garments industry, threatening Hun Sen’s support base. Increasing Western hostility will push Cambodia further into China’s orbit.

Appointments to the Supreme Court of Nepal

2018 ◽  
pp. 267-280
Author(s):  
Semanta Dahal
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Power Sharing ◽  
Special Committee ◽  
Judicial Appointments ◽  
Chief Justice ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The Government

This essay analyses how Nepal has consciously made attempts to depoliticize judicial appointments—while appointments to the Supreme Court were originally made at the behest of the executive (the monarch), the fifth Constitution onwards (in 1990), appointments became the prerogative of the ‘Judicial Council’, a body chaired by the Chief Justice of Nepal. This essay describes how by the time Nepal enacted its Interim Constitution of 2006, judicial appointments involved all three branches of the government. This essay observes that the 2015 Constitution retains the Judicial Council and the Parliamentary Hearing Special Committee, and by necessary implication, the model of power-sharing between the three branches of government. Though still largely untested, this essay parts with the belief that the appointment procedures under this Constitution may lead to appropriate selections being made, though its complicated power-sharing devices might quite easily descend into gridlock.

US Supreme Court will generate greater controversy

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Foreseeable Future ◽  
Court Reform ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Chief Justice ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Us Supreme Court ◽  
Political Backlash

Significance The decision to hold a hearing on this issue, rather than simply issue a decision, reflects a degree of concern about perceptions of the Court’s legitimacy following the transfer of the country’s currently polarised politics onto the Court through recent appointments. Impacts The conservative majority of the Supreme Court is so dominant that no liberal decisions are likely in the foreseeable future. Chief Justice Roberts will try on occasion to moderate the Court’s conservative decision-making but mostly without effect. The recent report from President Joe Biden’s commission on the Supreme Court will prove ineffectual. Upcoming cases will provoke a political backlash among voters and make Court reform a central preoccupation for some Democrats.

A Committed Judiciary

2018 ◽  
pp. 18-30
Author(s):  
T.R. Andhyarujina
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Judicial Independence ◽  
Tipping Point ◽  
Judicial Appointments ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
History Of

The tipping point in the history of judicial appointments in India was the judgment of the Supreme Court in Kesavananda Bharati v. State of Kerala ((1973) 4 SCC 225). In this essay that spans the tumultuous period between this judgment and the end of the Emergency (in 1977) when Indira Gandhi was prime minister, the author demonstrates how judicial appointments became a proxy for a larger battle for control of the Constitution. Arguing that the independence of the judiciary was imperilled beyond redemption, the author carefully traces the pattern of executive interference up to and after the proclamation of Emergency. This essay argues that the severe blow dealt to judicial independence in this period, in a way, determined the course of how the process for judicial appointments was shaped in future decades.

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