Gautam Bhatia's 'argumentation' and 'slant': two observations

This piece is a response to points included in this piece attributed to Gautam Bhatia, dated 2019 Nov 18. This piece is neither a defense nor an endorsement of the subject of Dr. Bhatia's piece, the former chief justice of India (and any of his judgments, positions etc). It is limited to what I perceive as a flaw in Bhatia's argumentation and a call-out of what I see as one of his politico-legal slants.

Observation 1: NPWAPCG (no place where aggrieved people could go) argumentation

GB 3

Let us take Bhatia seriously, break his argument down, to see how it plays out:
  1. The court should not have taken over the Executive's task
  2. The Executive should have done the task
  3. and in that process, if the Executive violated rights
  4. the aggrieved could appeal to: the court!
In effect, Bhatia is taking the Supreme Court to task for its more direct involvement so that the same organisation—the Supreme Court—could have, later, been approached for grievances! If the Supreme Court (SC) is the final recourse for dealing with grievances, by that logic, shouldn't an earlier involvement of the SC shorten the path to justice, if deliverance of justice was really the concern? Note that I am not saying the Supreme Court of India has always ensured flawless justice. I am, however, critiquing the argumentation Bhatia deploys: (effectively) that SC should not be involved earlier in the life-cycle of the process because the same SC will not be available later!

Observation 2: POIRAPT (protection of individual rights as primary task) slant

GB 1

I would be most obliged to anyone who can show me where in the Constitution "protection of individual rights" has been clearly and unequivocally specified as the "PRIMARY TASK" of the judiciary?  My question should not be construed as me undermining the—in my view—extremely important task of "protection of individual rights". My question to Bhatia, actually to anybody, is about the constitutional validity of Bhatia's claim: "PRIMARY TASK". To be further clear, I am not asking to be pointed to either opinions or prior judgments of individual judges in the past. I am asking about the absolute constitutional validity of the suggestion that protection of individual rights is THE PRIMARY TASK of the judiciary and therefore takes precedence over everything else.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Pratap Bhanu Mehta's point about 'demographic thinking': A response

Did Dec 6 2019 mark the first video-recorded (covert-ish) attempt to inject the word 'Liberal' into the Indian constitution?

Faizan Mustafa's claim about अयोध्या (ayōdhyā), संस्कृत (Sanskrit) and Indigenous sources: A response