Meet Our New Faculty | Pranav Verma
July 1, 2023
We extend a warm welcome to Mr. Pranav Verma who has joined us as Assistant Professor of Law. He was previously an Assistant Professor at NALSAR University of Law where he also coordinated the University’s flagship Lecture Series on Constitutionalism.
His academic interests lie in public law and criminal law which are reflected in his ongoing research and publications.
In this interview, he shares more about his interests and his work.
Can you tell us more about yourself/your background?
I was born in Delhi where I completed my schooling, after which I went on to pursue my undergraduate study in law from NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad. Thereafter, I worked briefly in the disputes practice of a law firm before gradually realising that academia was my true calling. My stints as a Teaching Assistant at NALSAR and the academically rich experience in the Master’s played an important role in this realisation.
What are your main areas of interest and teaching? How did your interest in these areas begin?
My main areas of interest lie in public law, particularly in constitutional law and criminal law. These interests were cultivated during my undergraduate studies. I still recall being introduced to Robert Cover’s ‘Violence and the Word‘ as part of our ‘Law and Language’ course in the first year of law school, which made me deeply appreciate the consequences of interpreting criminal statutes on civil liberties. At the same time, law school was instrumental in me cultivating an interest in constitutional law, which I sustained through being an active member of the Lecture Series on Constitutionalism at NALSAR. I have continued to pursue my interests in constitutional law and criminal law in my postgraduate studies as well. During my LLM, I specifically studied the law and practice of the death penalty in India. My ongoing doctoral work is focused on the institutional discretionary role of the CJI in constituting benches and allocating cases.
What will you be teaching at NLS?
I will be teaching ‘Law of Evidence’ in the upcoming trimester (July-September 2023) to the third year students of the B.A., L.L.B. (Hons.) programme. This is a foundational course and concepts in the law of evidence have an across-the-board applicability to various fields of law. It is crucial for law students to know about the rules of evidence to put any specialised study of law into practice.
Your thoughts on starting your teaching journey at NLS?
I am excited for this new stint and look forward to enriching classroom engagements and mutual learning with my students. I also particularly look forward to benefiting from the experience and insights of my peers and colleagues, and the vibrant community of scholars present in NLSIU.
Which one book / podcast / published piece would you recommend to our students and why?
I would recommend Albie Sachs’ ‘The Strange Alchemy of Life and Law’, and in particular, the Chapter titled ‘Tock-Tick: The Working of a Judicial Mind’. It is an excellent insight into the judicial mind, so to speak, and perhaps best explains how adjudication happens.
Could you highlight some of your key projects or publications?
Broadly, my writings and research interests are within the fields of constitutional law and criminal law.
- I published my views on death sentencing in India and the need for an alternate theoretical framework to evaluate its vires in the Cambridge Law Review in 2021.
- I have recently published a Chapter in the Annual Survey of State Laws in India which attempts to understand how federalism operates on the ground by taking State legislative activities as a metric, and will also be working on the 2023 edition of the Survey.
- My paper on the judicial treatment of the ‘essential religious practice’ standard since 1954 is expected to be out soon in the Journal of Asian Studies (Duke University Press).
To view more of his publications, please visit Pranav’s faculty page.