Scaling Justice

This book seeks to answer the question 'What influences the choices and decisions that Indian Supreme Court judges make?'. In different contexts and cases contradictory images remain in circulation; judges are variously described as passive, pro-active, impartial, biased, pro-citizen, pro-business, apolitical, pro-poor etc. After briefly explaining the views in different schools of thought, the author sets out her 'embedded negotiator' approach, which addresses the
diverse influences on judicial decision- makers. In this approach the focus is trained on judges and their constant negotiations within grey zones in the fields of civil liberties and social rights.
To establish the validity of the approach the author uses the Probit model, which she also explains extensively. She studies a sample of civil liberties cases spanning the period 1950 to 2005 and social rights cases post Emergency. She collates the data base of cases with another data base containing characteristics of 116 Supreme Court judges, including religious affiliation. This is the first time that such a model has been used in Indian legal research.