About this Book

Cover -- Courting the People -- Editors Page -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction -- Endnotes -- 1 Competing Populisms: Revisiting the Origins of Public Interest Litigation in India -- Constitutional roots of PIL -- The great constitutional conflict: 1950-77 -- Understanding the rise of PIL -- 'The People' in judicial discourse -- The indigeneity of PIL -- Early controversies around PIL -- The Curious Case of the Disappearing Public Interest Petitioner -- Endnotes -- 2 The Case that Felled a City: A PIL with Nine Lives -- The Delhi Vehicular Pollution case -- WP(C) 4677/1985: The many-headed Hydra -- WP 4677/1985 becomes 'the Sealing case' -- Conclusion -- Endnotes -- 3 Public Interest Litigation as a Slum Demolition Machine -- PIL cases against slums: The first phase -- The emergence of PIL as a slum demolition machine -- The Kalyan Sanstha case: The slum demolition machine perfected -- Epilogue -- Conclusion -- Endnotes -- 4 Good Judges, Bad Judges: Critical Discourses on Public Interest Litigation in India -- The consequentialist critique of PIL -- The institutional critique of PIL -- Epilogue -- Endnotes -- Conclusion: The Procedural is Political -- Endnotes -- Bibliography -- Index