The Oxford Handbook of the Indian Constitution

Sujit Choudhry · Madhav Khosla · Pratap Bhanu Mehta

May 2016 · Oxford University Press

About this ebook

The Indian Constitution is one of the world's longest and most important political texts. Its birth, over six decades ago, signalled the arrival of the first major post-colonial constitution and the world's largest and arguably most daring democratic experiment. Apart from greater domestic focus on the Constitution and the institutional role of the Supreme Court within India's democratic framework, recent years have also witnessed enormous comparative interest in India's constitutional experiment. The Oxford Handbook of the Indian Constitution is a wide-ranging, analytical reflection on the major themes and debates that surround India's Constitution. The Handbook provides a comprehensive account of the developments and doctrinal features of India's Constitution, as well as articulating frameworks and methodological approaches through which studies of Indian constitutionalism, and constitutionalism more generally, might proceed. Its contributions range from rigorous, legal studies of provisions within the text to reflections upon historical trends and social practices. As such the Handbook is an essential reference point not merely for Indian and comparative constitutional scholars, but for students of Indian democracy more generally.

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About the author

Sujit Choudhry is Dean and I. Michael Heyman Professor of Law at the UC Berkeley School of Law. His books include The Migration of Constitutional Ideas (Cambridge, 2006) and Constitutional Design for Divided Societies: Integration or Accommodation (Oxford, 2008). Madhav Khosla is a PhD candidate at the Department of Government, Harvard University. His books include The Indian Constitution (Oxford, 2012), Letters for a Nation: From Jawaharlal Nehru to His Chief Ministers (Penguin, 2014) and Unstable Constitutionalism: Law and Politics in South Asia (with Mark Tushnet, Cambridge, 2015). Pratap Bhanu Mehta is President and Chief Executive of the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi. His books include The Burden of Democracy (Penguin, 2003), Public Institutions in India: Performance and Design (with Devesh Kapur, Oxford, 2005), and The Oxford Companion to Politics in India (with Niraja Gopal Jayal, Oxford, 2010).