In the era of ‘democratic backsliding’, the judiciary, with the constitutional or supreme court at its helm, have been one of the prime targets. This attack comes against the backdrop of the liberal constitutionalist presumption that the independence of judiciary is indispensable to checks and balances, and that the judiciary, acting as the guardian of the constitution, is required to counteract the excesses of democracy.
On May 23 and 24, 2023, the Legal Studies Department at the Central European University, Vienna, organised a symposium that discussed the role of the apex courts in South Asia in resisting this "democratic backsliding." Titled 'Between Philosopher King and Juristocracy: The Ambivalence of Adventurous Apex Courts in South Asia', the symposium saw participation of a number of legal scholars from the South Asian region and doctoral candidates from CEU.
Coming in the backdrop of the 50th anniversary of the Basic Structure Doctrine in India, the four different panels at the symposium tackled an array of questions relevant to South Asian judicial landscape. Scholars spoke about the innovations of the Supreme Court of India in both jurisprudence and administration, the migration to and evolution of some of these ideas in other countries in South Asia, the role of the chief justices in sustaining constitutional democracy, the shifting terrain in the court's jurisprudence marked somewhat by both adventurism and inconsistency, the specific role that judges play and the influences that shape their decisions, and the possible trajectories legal scholarship could take in the region for a deeper analysis of the emerging judicial equations. The symposium ended with a roundtable that provided a comparative perspective of the issue with jurisdictions in Europe.
