Borrowing Constitutional Wisdom: Examining The Role Of Comparative Constitutional Law In India
- IJLLR Journal
- 1 day ago
- 2 min read
Himanshi Tiwari, Research Scholar,Dr. Ram Manohar Lohiya National Law University, Lucknow.
“The Court is conscious of the limits of a comparative approach. Each country is governed by its own constitutional and legal structure. Constitutional structures have an abiding connection with the history, culture, political doctrine and values which a society considers as its founding principles. Foreign judgments must hence be read with circumspection ensuring that the text is not read isolated from its context.”
- Justice Chandrachud in Justice K. Puttaswamy v. Union of India (2017).
The above statement is a testimony of the fact that comparative method has been incrementally accepted to widen the principles laid down in constitutional law of a country.
Introduction to Comparative Study in Constitutional Law
In the globalizing world that we live in, there is an ever-growing convergence of ideas, practices, lifestyles and much more. With the rise of the recognition of a person as simply not an individual of the ‘State’ to which he belongs, but as an individual with a ‘global’ identity transcending national and international borders, the law has also kept pace with synchronizing itself in all countries and jurisdictions. Since Constitutional law is the “grundnorm” for individuals all across the globe to be governed by a legal system, the legitimacy the Courts often derive from their counterparts is an interesting and intriguing aspect of studying law and legal philosophy.
Courts in India and abroad, while adjudicating on complex issues of constitutional law, do not remain “cribbed, cabined and confined” to doctrinaire limits set by the black letter law. They expand their horizon and intellectual perspective to learn from other jurisdictions and draw inspiration from their practices and enforcement of legal rights and carve out a niche to bring about evolutionary and purposive interpretations of law.
