Shaping The Indian Constitution: An Analytical Study Of Landmark Judicial Interpretations
- IJLLR Journal
- 2 minutes ago
- 1 min read
Jigyasa Verma, University of Allahabad
ABSTRACT
Indian Constitution’s deliberately broad, open‐textured language has enabled the Supreme Court to act as a dynamic interpreter rather than a mechanical umpire, progressively expanding and concretising fundamental rights and structural principles. On this basis, the Court has read Article 21 to include a wide cluster of dignity‐enhancing rights—such as livelihood, privacy, clean environment, and gender justice—transforming a narrow “life and personal liberty” clause into a robust framework for social and economic justice. The emergence of the Basic Structure Doctrine in Kesavananda Bharati (1973) institutionalised judicial guardrails over Parliament’s amending power, preserving core constitutional features like democracy, rule of law, secularism, and judicial independence. Parallelly, the Court’s development of Public Interest Litigation (PIL) opened judicial doors to disadvantaged litigants, while its consistent use of judicial review has checked arbitrary or infringing state action. Yet this very activism invites ongoing debate: whether the Court is creatively fulfilling constitutional promises or occasionally overstepping into policy‐making, thereby testing the balance between judicial innovation and democratic accountability. In essence, the abstract rests on the proposition that the Constitution’s flexibility and the Court’s interpretive willingness together shape an evolving constitutional democracy.
