Scaling Justice: India's Supreme Court, Anti-Terror Laws, and Social Rights

What explains the choices that India’s Supreme Court justices make? Traditional models of judicial decision-making emphasize either law (legal) or non-law (political, ideological, and institutional) factors as the determining influences on a judge. In Scaling Justice, the author argues that judges are “embedded negotiators” who craft judgments that avoid conflict with the political wings and preserve a “pro-citizen” reputation for the Court. According to this view, judges seek legitimacy for their decisions by negotiating with four elements that constrain or expand choices before them—laws, institutional norms/ experience/ rules, political preferences, and public concerns. The process of judging involves the constant negotiation by a judge with his multiple identities: as a citizen, an official of the state, and as a member of a judicial structure with its own norms. The author answers the question by combining a textured qualitative analysis of the constitutional and legal framework, landmark rulings and dissenting opinions, with a statistical multivariate analysis of cases. dealing with civil liberties and social rights.The book uses a probability analysis on the higher judiciary’s decisions in anti-terror, health, and education cases from 1950-2006. It represents the first time such an approach has been used to study the Indian Supreme Court.