scholarly journals Evaluating the Impact of the Indian Supreme Court Judgment on Sex-Selective Abortion

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sital Kalantry ◽  
Arindam Nandi
2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sital Kalantry

Lawyers bring public interest litigation cases (“PIL”) to the Indian Supreme Court seeking many different types of remedies, including to prevent the construction of power plants that may damage the environment or to prevent violations of rights of a group of people. The Indian Supreme Court (the “Supreme Court” or “Court”) sometimes responds by creating guidelines like what the executive branch might do. But in many PIL cases, litigants are not asking for the creating of new rules, but instead they are simply asking the Supreme Court to encourage the government to amend, implement, and enforce laws that already exist.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aparna Chandra ◽  
William Hubbard ◽  
Sital Kalantry

There has been a national debate raging in India about the system of appointments for Supreme Court and High Court judges. At the founding of the Indian Supreme Court, the executive had primary authority over judicial appointments. In 1993, the Supreme Court created a new system of appointments known as the collegium system, whereby the Chief Justice of India and senior judges of the Supreme Court make new appointments to the Supreme Court as well as the High Courts. In 2014, Parliament amended the Constitution and passed a bill to create a commission to appoint judges, but the Indian Supreme Court declared the law unconstitutional.In this article, we ascertain whether the nature of the appointments procedure impacts the biographical and other characteristics of the judges that are eventually selected. We do this by comparing the biographical characteristics of judges appointed by the executive-appointments system (prior to 1993), on the one hand, and the judges appointed by the collegium (on or after 1993) to the Supreme Court of India.We find that both the pre-collegium and the collegium system maintain the geographical and religious diversity of India in the candidates that are appointed. However, both have failed to account for gender diversity. In addition, the path to the Supreme Court appears to have narrowed – typically those who are appointed as judges by the collegium spend longer periods in private practice and on the bench than pre-collegium judges.


2020 ◽  
pp. 101-126
Author(s):  
Chaitanya Lakkimsetti

This chapter comparatively focuses on rights struggles of gay groups and transgender/hijra groups by focusing on two seemingly contradictory judgments of the Indian Supreme Court—the Koushal judgment of 2013, which declared Section 377 constitutional, and the same court’s 2014 NALSA decision, which granted rights to transgender groups—in order to discuss the impact of these legal decisions on the rights and recognition of LGBTKQHI groups. While the NALSA judgment made nonnormative gender identities legal, the Koushal judgment retained Section 377 and therefore upheld the idea that sexual acts considered to be against the “order of nature” were criminal. The chapter illustrates that while years of social activism have led to the tolerance of identities (today LGBTKQHI groups regularly organize pride marches and rally their political identities in public), nonnormative sexual acts remained criminal until 2018. The legal dichotomization of acts and identities has very important implications for the rights of sexually marginalized groups.


2011 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 181-196 ◽  
Author(s):  
BANG NGUYEN PHAM ◽  
TIMOTHY ADAIR ◽  
PETER S. HILL ◽  
CHALAPATI RAO

SummaryThis study examines the hypothesis that the stopping rule – a traditional postnatal sex selection method where couples decide to cease childbearing once they bear a son – plays a role in high sex ratio of last births (SRLB). The study develops a theoretical framework to demonstrate the operation of the stopping rule in a context of son preference. This framework was used to demonstrate the impact of the stopping rule on the SRLB in Vietnam, using data from the Population Change Survey 2006. The SRLB of Vietnam was high at the level of 130 in the period 1970–2006, and particularly in the period 1986–1995, when sex-selective abortion was not available. Women were 21% more likely to stop childbearing after a male birth compared with a female birth. The SRLB was highest at parity 2 (138.7), particularly in rural areas (153.5), and extremely high (181.9) when the previous birth was female. Given the declining fertility, the stopping rule has a potential synergistic effect with sex-selective abortion to accentuate a trend of one-son families in the population.


2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (01) ◽  
pp. 114-147
Author(s):  
Jusmalia Oktaviani ◽  
Siti Muti'ah Setiawati

This study explains about the policy of the Indian governmentin addressing the problem of �dowry deaths� in India. Dowrydeaths itself is a term for a murder or violence against wives inwhich performed by the husband or the husband's familybecause of the inability of the wife to meet the demand of payingthe dowry. The impact of the tradition of giving dowry is not onlythe death of the wives, but also the impact on the discriminationover the women and selective abortion of female fetuses. Thenumber of victims of dowry death reached more than 8000deaths per year.The phenomenon of dowry deaths required the Indiangovernment to intervene to resolve the issue. Indian governmenthave managed to make some policies, it covers the application ofthe rules of prohibiting dowry in the marriage that began with theDowry Prohibition Act of 1961, that punish the offender of dowrydeath with the threat of no less than seven years in prison; andalso, some policies to provide financial incentives to daughter, toprohibit the sex-selective abortion to female fetuses. In addition,the Indian central government's policy is also supported by theinitiative of the state government to initiate several relatedpolicies such as banning ultrasound technology, forbiddingabortion, as well as providing incentives to girls, and variousother policies. Although the government has been implementingvarious policies, but the weakness of law enforcement caused bythe strong patriarchal culture in society is one reason why thesepolicies are less effective in preventing loss of life because of'dowry deaths'.


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