This week’s faculty seminar featured presentation by Balu G. Nair, Assistant Professor of Law, NLSIU on his PhD research paper titled ‘Government Liability for Fundamental Rights Breaches in India: An Examination of the Writ Monetary Remedy.’ He presented on ‘Chapter 3: Interpretive Principle: Fit With Case Law.’

Abstract

Since the early 1980s, the Supreme Court of India, under its writ jurisdiction, has been awarding compensation for the breach of constitutionally guaranteed fundamental rights by government actors. This was made possible by the Court reading in such a power despite the text of Article 32 (which, among other things, provides for Court’s writ jurisdiction) not explicitly providing for it. The use of this power is also considered extraordinary as monetary compensation is usually to be recovered from trial courts through a civil suit.

Even after the passage of more than forty years since it was first awarded by the Supreme Court, the elements which make up a successful cause of action for this monetary remedy remain unclear. The judicial uncertainty has not been helped by the near complete absence of comprehensive scholarly accounts which attempt to make sense of this remedy, which he calls the ‘writ monetary remedy’.

Balu’s doctoral project, of which this chapter forms a central part of, attempts to derive a principle which could make sense of the Supreme Court’s case law on writ monetary remedy. While the thesis further attempts to defend the principle on the ground that it coheres with Indian constitutional law and established principles of remedial theory, in this chapter, he introduces the principle and tries to demonstrate how it fits with the case law on writ monetary remedy. In doing so, he argues that writ monetary remedy may be (and has been) awarded for the breach of any fundamental right and not just the violation of right to life and personal liberty in Article 21. Additionally, he also seeks to show that, despite the Court’s occasional suggestions that the remedy is available on a strict liability basis, i.e., without any fault on the part of the alleged wrongdoer, it has only been awarded when the breach is committed with manifest arbitrariness. Finally, he argues that the quantum of the award will primarily depend on the consequential pecuniary and non-pecuniary losses incurred by the rights-holder.

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The Queer Archive for Memory, Reflection, and Activism (QAMRA) and the Centre for Intellectual Property Research and Advocacy (CIPRA) jointly organised a roundtable titled ‘Copyright in Practice: Perspectives from Archives and Libraries.’

Event Details

• Venue: Ground Floor Conference Hall, Training Centre, NLSIU
• Day & Date: Saturday, March 28, 2026
• Timings: 9.30 AM – 1.30 PM

Open to the public. 

About the Roundtable

This roundtable examined how copyright law shapes – and sometimes constrains – the work of archives and libraries. Copyright is one of the most important, and very often poorly understood, aspect of archiving and librarianship.

Professionals in the fields of archives, libraries, and intellectual property and copyright law came together to address concerns and conceptualise best practices. The roundtable primarily had two sessions: the first consisted of archivists and librarians sharing their insights, experiences, and predictions, the second focussed on the exceptions to and limitations of copyright right law from a comparative perspective, looking at Indian and U.S. copyright law. The second part of the discussion addressed concerns raised in the first.

The roundtable featured a keynote by Professor Subbiah Arunachalam, a renowned scholar and activist in the area of open access.

Professor Arunachalam opened with remarks on open access, followed by sessions that addressed practical challenges as well as the role of copyright exceptions and limitations.

The format allowed for a direct exchange between practitioners and legal scholars, with real-world concerns feeding into the legal discussion and vice versa; important conversations about access to knowledge and challenges in enacting it were raised, and possible paths for future approaches were ventured.

Schedule

Keynote Speaker:
Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam, Renowned Scholar and Activist

Session 1:

• Deepika S., Senior Archivist, Archives at NCBS
• Shiju Alex, Chief Archivist and Director, Indic Digital Archive Foundation
• Madhan Muthu, Director, The Global Library, O. P. Jindal Global University
• Dr. Biswadeep Chakraborty, Archivist, India Foundation for the Arts, Bengaluru
• Mira Brunner, Chief Archivist, QAMRA Archival Project, NLSIU

Session 2:

• Ana Enriquez, Head of the Office of Scholarly Communications and Copyright, Penn State University Libraries, and Fulbright-Nehru Scholar, NLSIU
• Dr. Zakir T. Thomas, DPIIT IPR Chair Professor, NLSIU
• Dr. Arul George Scaria, Co-Director, CIPRA and Professor of Law, NLSIU

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This week’s faculty seminar featured presentations by Pranav Verma, Assistant Professor of Law and Dr. Rahul Hemrajani, Assistant Professor of Law, on their paper titled ‘The Myth of Judicial Primacy: An Empirical Analysis of Appointments in India’s Constitutional Courts.’

Abstract

The Supreme Court of India’s ‘collegium’ system was institutionalised to insulate judicial appointments from executive influence. The principal justification of the system is that it secures judicial “primacy” in appointments and thereby preserves judicial independence. This is acutely reflected in what the court’s successive judgments have laid down – an unanimously reiterated collegium recommendation binds the executive to make the appointment. They test that doctrinal claim against institutional reality. Drawing on an original empirical dataset of 2,117 collegium recommendations and 2,390 executive notifications, apart from contextual media coverage, between October 2017 and December 2025, the faculty members examine whether judicial primacy prevails in practice.

They argue that the true measure of “primacy” must be found in moments of executive disagreements with the collegium, and by that measure, the executive is able to effectively assert its influence in the appointments process. They develop a typology of ‘executive primacy’, where the executive effectively influences the appointments process through four recurring mechanisms: de facto pocket vetoes; strategic delays in notifying appointments; batch segregation; and anticipatory accommodation of executive preferences within the collegium recommendations. These findings underscore the need to ground debates on judicial appointments in empirical realities rather than doctrine alone.

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As part of its monthly workshops, the JSW Centre for the Future of Law at NLSIU is organising a workshop on March 20, 2026, from 3:00 PM to 4:00 PM (IST) with Dr. Armin Alimardani, Senior Lecturer in Law and Emerging Technologies at the School of Law, Western Sydney University. Dr. Alimardani will discuss his co-authored paper, “The Promise and the Peril of the Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence in Litigation.”

The online workshop is open to the public. To attend, kindly register here (Microsoft Teams).

Abstract:

Generative Artificial Intelligence (‘GenAI’) has been employed by lawyers and parties to litigation in courts and tribunals around the world. While GenAI holds out the promise of more accessible legal services, GenAI also creates risks, such as the production of non-existent or inaccurate case citations and statements of law. Both lawyers and self-represented litigants (‘SRLs’) have failed to verify this ‘fake’ law and have used the outputs in litigation. This article examines why lawyers and SRLs are prone to misuse GenAI in litigation, including by reference to aspects of human psychology, such as automation bias and verification drift. The article then explores potential solutions to address this misuse: education, certification, sanctions and/or prohibition. Attention to solutions is crucial if the justice system and its users are to reap the benefits of GenAI without the risk of a hallucinated body of precedent eroding public trust in legal processes and the courts. Click to read the paper: The Promise and the Peril of the Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence in Litigation.

About the Speaker

Dr Armin Alimardani is a Senior Lecturer in Law and Emerging Technologies at the School of Law, Western Sydney University. His interdisciplinary research sits at the intersection of law, technology, science and philosophy. His publications and talks focus on the social, ethical and legal impact of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), brain-computer interface, neuroscience and genetics. Armin’s current projects include studying the way technology is shaping the future of the legal profession, and the potential use of AI in sentencing (collaborating with the University of Brawijaya). Armin has a great sense of innovation in teaching and learning and is currently collaborating with colleagues at UNSW Sydney to build and prototype research and educational tools with natural language models (https://safetofailai.streamlit.app). Read more here.