Justice HP Sandesh Exposes Open Threat to Indian Judiciary | Akash Banerjee  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hp7bFp05Ti8 Jul 12, 2022 Justice HP Sandesh of the Karnataka High Court has done the unthinkable - what has always been discussed in hushed tones is now out in the open. Just how 'independent' and 'free' is the judiciary ???? - Justice Sandesh blew to bits the fake myth that Justices are isolated from 'influences' .... in a stinging observation ( that is now on record) it has been clearly shown how deep the rot is. Sadly this too will go unaddressed very soon.

क्या आज के समय में कोर्ट से न्याय की उम्मीद लगानी चाहिए? | Prashant Bhushan | Yogendra Yadav  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJG6_vO5f0A Jul 10, 2022  क्या अब भी कोर्ट से न्याय की उम्मीद लगानी चाहिए?

संदर्भ: नूपुर शर्मा, तीस्ता सीतलवाड़, जुबैर मोहम्मद, रोहित रंजन
in this video farmer leader and political activist Yogendra Yadav has put a discussion with Prashant Bhushan about the role of judiciary in todays india and the recent controversy of nupur sharma and arrest of Mohammed Zubair

Did the (US) Supreme Court Open the Door to Reviving One of Its Worst Decisions?
James B. Stewart  July 2, 2022  https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/02/business/scotus-lochner-v-new-york.html  

In 1905.. striking down a law that prevented bakery employees from working more than 10 hours a day and 60 hours a week, the court, under the 14th Amendment, enshrined a constitutional right to “freedom of contract” — that is, the freedom of people to form contracts without the government’s involvement. Based on the logic of Dobbs ( which overturned Roevs Wade on abortion rights), “there’s no principled way to hold back the tide that would return us to the law of the late 1800s on matters of privacy, reproduction, sexual intimacy and L.G.B.T.Q. equality.” Although Lochner itself is probably “too radioactive” for this court to embrace outright, the court’s overall hostility to government regulation of business and its celebration of individual freedom are clearly in the ascendant.

Comments relating to India on a Whatapp forward:

As talk of Lochner being revived by US Supreme Court is in itself frightening, particularly given the rule of the tycoons who lord over a gig economy, it won’t help to believe this is happening in a land far far away. Globalisation and work from home have already produced the perfect combo to ensure corporations get far more from workers than workers deserve to get for their labour and intellect. This will have implications for millions of Indians intertwined into the business emerging from USA.

Besides, there is the problem of the law of contract being more popular with a pro business approach: it will be argued by corporate honchos that they aren’t tyrants, that they are all sweet guys and one must always appreciate the power of free enterprise and entrepreneurship and not allow the State to impede this natural flow with a return to the “license Raj”. (I can hear Swaminathan Ankleshar Aiyer already shuffling his notes to write that out in tomorrows ET!)

What should worry us in India very deeply is that the TSR Subramanian report promoting major amendments to environmental laws to make them pro business, and based on the principle of “utmost good faith” in Businesses to be environmentally conscious, is not a principle limited to environmental regulation. Imagine that principle used by Ola, Uber, Zomato, Etc., and helping their workers work sone more in the belief it will help them get a better life sooner. Or of rhe really serious effort to privatise waste management, as in Bangalore, claiming again (and horrifically inhumanely) that it will build efficiency.

The point is bare to see: the Lochner rule is already in play in India: labour codes have been systematically diluted and now, as of last Friday, all major environmental laws are proposed to be fundamentally emasculated by decriminalising environmental violations. The weak implementation of environmental laws and the corrupt administration by various wings of the @MoEF have worked to build a narrative that its now better to believe corporates will step up to not damage the environment fearful more of stiff fines - which, as is now proposed, they are not.

If we allow these amendments, environment and labour standards in India will hit rock bottom, lawyers will become super super rich with the percentage they will collect defending corporations who have polluted but using the cause-effect rule (which cannot be easily proven by victims due to weak or no standards in regulation) and further beat down whatever we now have has normative regulatory praxis to protect us from the hell of environmental contamination.

The US SC has already ruled against tougher environmental standards using another principle, which most folks won’t even know existed, to protect dirty and exploitative businesses. In India, with the Indian Supreme Court attacking the fundamental rights of those who suffered the most egregious violence and sought justice, and has looked away when such rulings have been abused with impunity by police, we are set up for an unprecedented jurisprudential disaster. Just think deeply what it would be like for the Lochner rule joining hands with the systemic and flagrant abuse of police power, which the State is meant to employ to protect human rights, labour and the environment, and is doing just the opposite!

Justice in Crisis - https://countercurrents.org/2022/06/justice-in-crisis/

It is rather ironic that at a time when the CJI is addressing students at New York on democracy and senior Justice of Supreme Court D.Y.Chandrachud is speaking at King’s College,Cambridge on human rights and civil liberties,a vacation bench of SC here has administered an unexpected and rather uncalled-for blow to noted human rights activist Teesta Setalvad,prompting Gujarat Police and ATS to clamp umpteen charges on her and arrest her,leaving all decent citizens in shock. 

The current debased American notion of democracy is merely limited to popular elections at set intervals,and civil rights be damned.Which India is of course is duly observing with a tamed EC running its programme as it suits the rulers’ interests.ALL independent institutions created over decades to check the outreach of overweening power have been similarly disarmed,and consultations ensuring informed consent of the citizens in decisions affecting their lives have now been effectively choked off.That mainstream media with one or two notable exceptions pose no challenge to rampaging power of that kind is an unacknowledged shame.And this is the democracy that is being drummed up all around the world by cock-a-hoop drummers.The world listens, but not in a daze but with a smothered snigger.

The twenty-one month Emergency declared in 1975 is often recalled like a faded memento to celebrate escape from the “greatest ever danger to democracy’ while something far more sweeping and far-reaching is being imposed irreversibly with relentless steps and brutal method on the entire structure of the democratic state.

 by Hiren Gohain 

28/06/2022

Justice in Crisis – 2

 04/07/2022