In the course of the past two decades, the Supreme Court has regulated the use of India’s forest resources; passed orders on the type of fuel to be used in urban public transport; controlled appointments to the higher judiciary; and declared constitutional amendments invalid. The Shifting Scales of Justice traces the ideological direction that the Supreme Court has charted during this time, and examines the expansion of its power and transformation of its worldview.
The book focuses on what is considered the Court’s more conservative stance, evident in its comparison of slum dwellers to pickpockets, its ordering of the interlinking of rivers in the name of national progress, or its reasoning that tribal populations will benefit from the mining of their lands. The essays study the emergence of a judicial sovereignty that appears to be committed to the ‘oppressed and bewildered’ in name only.