Law

The Indian intellectual property regime has often met with severe criticism from the United States as India strives to balance the need to provide affordable healthcare with a thriving market for a competitive pharmaceutical industry. In this context, the nexus between compulsory licensing, competition law and patent law merits a closer examination and it is debatable whether a strong competition law framework is indeed the way forward.

The Mental Health Care Bill, passed in the Rajya Sabha in August 2016, and up for discussion in the Lok Sabha, attempts to address complex issues and integrate divergent perspectives, resulting in uneasy compromise. It is still a work in progress. 

The principle of sustainable development has evolved to occupy centrality in environmental jurisprudence in India. The Supreme Court has reiterated its importance in the country's environmental legal regime. However, the jurisprudence has been criticised for framing it as a zero sum game where economic development has been repeatedly used as a justification to trump environmental violations, and therefore, rendering it as only declaratory and lacking in content and sufficient teeth to shape public action. But this has compelled policy and statutory recognition of the principle of sustainable development. The National Green Tribunal Act of 2010 recognises it too. This statutory recognition has paved the way for a robust jurisprudence spearheaded by the NGT that has actively sought to evolve a standard of review for public actions in effectuating the principle of sustainable development and in doing so has departed from the reductionist utilitarianism that had characterised the jurisprudence of Supreme Court.

India's Constitution has been amended over a hundred times since its inception in 1950. The landmark amendments are discussed with special emphasis on the first amendment, which altered the way the freedom of speech and expression was originally understood by the framers of the Constitution.