Call for Papers Indian Law Institute, New Delhi – University of Portsmouth, United Kingdom Joint Workshop Constitutional Governance in India: Assessing Implementation, Measuring Impact August 2023 (Workshop 21-22 July 2023); Submit Abstract March 05

The Indian Law Institute, New Delhi, and the University of Portsmouth, United Kingdom, are jointly organizing a capacity-building workshop to advance scholarship on constitutional governance in India. Please note that this is a workshop, not a traditional conference. It will proceed in two stages. First, we shall shortlist 8-10 submissions based on the abstracts we receive by 05 March 2023. Second, we shall invite shortlisted authors to submit full drafts by 10 July 2023. We will circulate the full drafts to all participants and selected experts in the field. As part of the workshop, we aim to provide each author with feedback on substance and methodology.

Theme

The Constitution, India’s central governing document, has established a large number of institutions. How well have these institutions functioned? The Constitution offers little guidance on how they should function. Instead, law and politics coalesce in unexpected ways to determine how they actually function. Similarly, the Supreme Court regularly interprets the Constitution to decide specific cases. That is the dispute resolution feature of adjudication. But adjudication also has a norm-guiding feature: court decisions guide – alter – the behaviour of other institutions. Have constitutional cases changed how institutions function? Again, law and politics blend in unanticipated ways to determine the long-term impact of decisions. This workshop invites abstracts that interrogate the working of constitutional institutions or the impact of constitutional cases on such institutions.

Eligibility

Consistent with the objective of this workshop (capacity building), this call for submissions is restricted to those who are currently employed as Lecturers and Assistant Professors. Students (PhD or otherwise) and senior scholars should not submit abstracts. In considering whether to submit an abstract, please pay attention to the theme explained above. We welcome abstracts that assess the performance of constitutional offices or assess the impact of Supreme Court decisions on these offices. So, we are interested in abstracts:

• that investigate how specific institutions or mechanisms (e.g. Parliament, legislatures, council of ministers, opposition, speakers, governors, collegium, commissions, etc.) have functioned

OR
• that measure the impact of specific Supreme Court judgments on institutions.

Note that abstracts (and full drafts) that only adopt a doctrinal method (i.e. limited just to case analyses) are unsuitable for this workshop. Instead, submissions must engage with how institutions actually function or the impact of Supreme Court decisions on the functioning of such institutions.

While submitting abstracts, authors must clearly outline (a) the institution or decision(s) they plan to investigate (b) the argument they wish to make and (c) the data and sources (e.g. newspaper reports, government reports, interviews, archival materials) they intend to use to develop their arguments.

Also, please clearly state your name, designation, and institutional affiliation.

 

Abstracts and shortlisted papers submitted after the due date shall not be considered.

Contact

Anyone eligible to submit an abstract is welcome to contact the convenors with their queries:

Prof Shubhankar Dam, University of Portsmouth ([email protected]) Prof Anurag Deep, Indian Law Institute ([email protected])

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