The Jurisprudential Shift From "Justice According To Law" To "Law According To Justice": Judicial Expansion Of Article 21 Through Constitutional Interpretation
Atri Patel, Gujarat National Law University, Gandhinagar
ABSTRACT
Right to Life and Personal Liberty, encompassed under Article 21 has witnessed significant evolution, from merely a procedural safeguard to becoming a repository of unenumerated fundamental rights. Such expansion possessed critical questions over what led to it and the interpretive methodology that ensured such a shift via interpretive constitutional approach, without any constitutional amendments. This paper investigates this methodological shift towards a value driven principle of “Law According to Justice”, in place of “Justice According to Law” by the Supreme Court of India. The paper finds that the approach taken in the Maneka Gandhi case acted as a watershed moment in the constitutional interpretation method, which dismantled the restrictive “silo” doctrine adopted in the case of A.K. Gopalan. Such a shift implanted the effects of “due process of law” in the Indian Constitution, without actual use of the phrase. The paper further examines, with the help of three constitutional bench verdicts of the past decade, how this infusion of substantive due process into Indian Constitutionalism cemented human dignity as the normative approach of Article 21. This shift in the approach by Indian Judiciary reflects a global shift towards transformative and liberal constitutionalism, prioritizing substantive justice over rigid proceduralism, as evident through the judicial pronouncements of constitutional courts of South Africa, Canada, and Colombia. The paper concludes that the shift in the approach of the Indian judiciary is a deliberate transformation and not isolated judicial overreach, ensuring the Constitution as a living, organic document, which has potential of protecting individual rights in an evolving complex society.
Keywords: Article 21, Justice According to Law, Law According to Justice, Due Process of Law, Interpretive Constitutionalism.
