University of Oxford Human Rights Hub Journal (U OxHRH J)

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

Special Issue: ‘New Beginnings: Indian Constitutional Rights Jurisprudence after Puttaswamy’

In August 2017, a nine-judge bench of the Indian Supreme Court delivered a unanimous and wide-ranging opinion affirming that privacy was a fundamental right guaranteed by the Indian Constitution (Puttaswamy v Union of India). The six concurring opinions did not merely affirm the existence of the right, but dealt with a variety of topics, including the place of dignity, autonomy and freedom within the constitutional scheme, the relationship between the individual and the State, the interpretation of the Constitution’s fundamental rights chapter, and the standard of judicial review that must be applied to rights adjudication. Puttaswamy is hailed as the possible harbinger of a new age of rights-jurisprudence in India (“Constitution v. 3.0″, as someone observed).

In the fifteen months that have passed since the Puttaswamy judgment, the Supreme Court has delivered four important constitutional cases, sitting in benches of five judges: the decriminalisation of adultery, the legality of same-sex relations, the right of women to access a Hindu temple, and the legality of India’s national biometric identification programme. Each of these cases has tested the new constitutional terrain laid by Puttaswamy and has yielded radical results, both in terms of outcome and in the reasoning of the Court.

It is therefore time to take stock of the Indian constitutional rights jurisprudence in the wake of Puttaswamy.

Submissions:

U OxHRH J invites submissions for a special issue on this subject. The special issue will carry ‘lead articles’ analysing the developments in Indian rights jurisprudence since Puttaswamy, and situate each article within the broader context of comparative human rights law via a ‘response article’. The special issue will carry the lead article and its response article together. The aim is to provide a considered analysis making sense of the lengthy and rich rights jurisprudence in India, and having it understood in light of comparative human rights law in a dialogic way.

Lead Articles: Each lead article submission must either (a) consider at least one of the recent rights judgments delivered by the Supreme Court of India in 2017-18 and contextualise it within the Indian legal landscape and the current socio-economic, political and cultural context in India, or (b) consider constitutional and jurisprudential themes that emerge out of these judgments (such as, for example – but not limited to – substantive equality, the relationship between the individual and the State, the tension between the autonomy interests of individuals and groups, etc.) Submissions should be in the form of long articles. Case notes will not be considered. Submissions should be 8,000-10,000 words long (footnotes included). Word limit shall be strictly interpreted.

Response Articles: Each lead article will be paired with a commentator who will write a shorter comparative response (6,000-8,000 words) responding to the main article from a global and comparative constitutional rights perspective.

If you would like to make a submission for a lead article or would like to write a response article, please get in touch with the editors for the special issue: Shreya Atrey (shreya.atrey@bristol.ac.uk) and Gautam Bhatia (Gautam.Bhatia@law.ox.ac.uk).

Last date for submission of lead articles is 30 May 2019. Response articles will be assigned thereafter and the last date for submission for response articles will be 16 August (Wed).

All submissions should be made via email to oxfordhumanrightshub@law.ox.ac.uk

**The first edition of the U of OxHRH J can be found here**