From Sentinel To Sovereign: Judicial Activism, Overreach, Constitutional Limits Of Judicial Power In India
- IJLLR Journal
- 2 days ago
- 1 min read
Akanksha Ravindra Karankal, B.B.A. LL.B. (Hons.), Maharashtra National Law University Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar
ABSTRACT
The Indian Supreme Court has been transformed due to post-emergency era into a proactive interpreter of constitutional rights, generating the phenomenon broadly termed judicial activism. While the Court's expanded role has reinforced democratic accountability and enlarged the protective scope of fundamental rights, it has simultaneously prompted scholarly and constitutional debate over the permissible limits of judicial intervention. Where judicial action crosses from principled rights-enforcement into governance and policymaking, it risks constituting judicial overreach a condition inimical to the separation of powers that underlies India's constitutional order.
This paper contains a doctrinal and critical analysis of the conceptual boundary between judicial activism and judicial overreach. Drawing on the Basic Structure Doctrine and a review of landmark Supreme Court decisions including Kesavananda Bharati, Maneka Gandhi, Vishaka, the NJAC judgment, and Puttaswamy it traces the judiciary's evolving interpretive approach and examines the constitutional limits that cabin that approach. Brief comparative reference is made to situate the Indian experience within a broader constitutional framework. The paper concludes with a normative framework for preserving institutional equilibrium between necessary judicial intervention and impermissible judicial excess.
Keywords: Judicial Activism, Judicial Overreach, Fundamental Rights, Separation of Powers, Constitutional Interpretation, Basic Structure Doctrine.
