CONS1026 | The Constitution in 13 Acts: Reading De and Bhatia

2019 has been a good year for constitutional scholarship in India. Rohit De’s analytic account of the emergence of the new postcolonial regulatory state in the 1950s traverses questions of property, religion, equality and free speech. Gautam Bhatia’s chronicles India’s ‘transformative constitution’ in 9 Acts. Put together we are presented with an incisive enquiry into 13 key constitutional law cases that have shaped India’s post-Independence history. This course will be anchored around these 13 ‘’Ácts.’’ Each week we will read a Chapter from these books very closely. 2 students will write a response paper which will inform the classroom discussion. The focus of each class will be to critically evaluate the Chapter and to develop and overall perspective on the benefits and burdens of the adopting different methodological approaches to understanding constitutional law.

Instruction to students:

You will write 2 response papers between 1000 – 1500 words in length engaging with the Chapters in the weeks selected by you.
Participation marks will depend on your active and constructive participation in classes where you do not write response papers.
You will write 1 Seminar paper of less that 3500 words on a topic chosen in Week 4 of the Course.