Education

• B.A. LL.B. (Hons.) from NLSIU (2020)
• LL.M. from Yale Law School (2025)

Profile

Hrishika holds a B.A. LL.B. from National Law School of India University, and a Master’s from Yale Law School. She has previously litigated at the Supreme Court of India as part of a chamber involved primarily in constitutional litigation and civil rights work. She has also served as a Law Clerk at the Supreme Court and led a study of capital sentencing practices in India as part of Project 39A. Her research interests, which she has pursued as part of her Master’s degree and subsequent Fellowship at the Melbourne Law School, include critiques of the legal form, the relationship between constitutions and rule-of-law ideologies, and the social lives of constitutional texts.

Hrishika also edits a blog, Against the Grain: Law, State, Capital.

Publications

Journal publications

• Hrishika Jain, ‘Making Love Legible: Queering Indian Legal Conceptions of “Family”’ in Vol. 10, Asian Journal of Law & Society published by Cambridge University Press (Jul. 10, 2023) [available here]. 
• Hrishika Jain, ‘Questionably foreclosing life imprisonment: The death penalty framework in Indian trial courts’ in Vol. 15(1), Jindal Global Law Review (2024) [available here].
• Hrishika Jain & Kaustubh Chaturvedi ‘Ends and Means: Reflections on the Electoral Bonds Judgment’ in Vol. 6, NLU-D Journal of Legal Studies (2024) [available here].
• Hrishika Jain, ‘Towards a Model of Judicial Review for Collegium Appointments’ in Vol. 4(2), Comparative Constitutional Law and Administrative Law Quarterly (Dec. 2018) [available here]. 

Popular media

• Hrishika Jain, ‘The Supreme Court Looks Inward: What the New Caste Report Reveals – and Conceals’, published in The Wire (Dec. 13, 2025) [available here].
• Hrishika Jain, ‘Reclaiming Ground for Democracy in Bihar: Lessons from Markadwadi ’, published in The Wire (Oct. 24, 2025) [available here].
• Hrishika Jain & Kaustubh Chaturvedi, ‘The Marital Rape Exception Must Fall ’, published in The Wire (Jan. 28, 2022) [available here]. 
• Hrishika Jain & Adrija Ghosh, ‘Voyeuristic Narratives of ‘Bad’ Women: What the Media Gets Wrong in Depicting Women on Death Row’, published in News Laundry (Oct. 9, 2021) [available here]. 

Reports

• Hrishika Jain, ‘Death Penalty Sentencing in India’s Trial Courts (2018-2020)’, published by Project 39A, National Law University, Delhi (Oct. 15, 2022) [available here]. 
• Co-authored ‘Research Brief: An Analysis of the Criminal Procedure (Identification) Act, 2022 ’, published by National Law University, Delhi (April 2022) [available here].
• Hrishika Jain & Adrija Ghosh, ‘Death Penalty in India: Annual Statistics Report, 2021 ’, published by Project 39A, National Law University, Delhi (Jan. 31, 2022) [available here].

Blogs

• Hrishika Jain, ‘The Bootstrapping Conundrum: Proposing Amendments to Section 10, Indian Evidence Act’, published on The P39A Criminal Law Blog (Dec. 24, 2021) [available here]. 
• Aditya Phalnikar, Hrishika Jain, Adrija Ghosh, ‘Explaining the Bail Order in Sudha Bharadwaj’s Case’, published on The P39A Criminal Law Blog (Dec. 3, 2021) [available here].
• Hrishika Jain, ‘Exploring the Failure of Restorative Thought in the Indian Criminal Justice System ’, published on The Proof of Guilt (Aug. 26, 2020) [available here].
• Hrishika Jain, ‘Election Commission: Orders and Constitutional Chaos ’, published in the Socio-Legal Review Forum (Aug. 16, 2019) [available here].
• Hrishika Jain, ‘Lok Prahari: A Struggle for Legislative Accountability and Reform’ published in Law and Other Things (Apr. 19, 2018) [available here].
• Hrishika Jain, ‘The Supreme Court in Rajesh Sharma v. State of U.P.: Justice to the Accused, or Chilling Effect?’ published in the Socio-Legal Review Forum (Oct. 7, 2017) [available here].