Fundamental Rights Litigation 1961-2008

India, 1961 - 2008

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Reference ID

IND_2008_FRL_v01_M

DOI

https://doi.org/10.48529/evgs-mv38

Producer(s)

Varun Gauri

Collection(s)

Development Research Microdata

Metadata

Documentation in PDF DDI/XML JSON

Created on

Jul 18, 2012

Last modified

Sep 26, 2013

Page views

30215

Downloads

1518

Identification

Survey ID Number

IND_2008_FRL_v01_M

Title

Fundamental Rights Litigation 1961-2008

Country/Economy

Name	Country code
India	IND

Study type

Administrative Records, Other (ad/oth]

Abstract

One of the key questions about judicial involvement in policymaking, which is increasing everywhere, is the extent to which rights-based litigation is as redistributive as it is intended to be. A number of scholars have expressed doubt that it can be, citing the facts that social, and procedural barriers prevent the great majority of poor people from making claims in courts; accumulated experience gives the rich and the powerful advantages in the courtroom; patterns of judicial recruitment and retention, which reflect prevailing configurations of political power, significantly affect the attitudes and calculations of judges and without the active support of elected officials, opponents can easily limit and undermine the implementation of pro-poor rulings. But empirical assessments of these hypotheses are in short supply. To address this question, DECHD researchers coded the contents of court decisions relating to public interest litigation; scheduled castes, scheduled tribes, and other backward classes; and women's and children's rights that reached the Indian Supreme Court in the last forty years. They also coded the social class of the claimant. Analyses of the data showed that win rates for fundamental rights claims are significantly higher when the claimant is from an advantaged social group than when he or she is from a marginalized group, which constitutes a social reversal, both from the original objective of public interest litigation and from the relative win rates in the 1980s. These data have been used for research,1 and have been cited in a number of media outlets and blogs.

Kind of Data

Administrative records data [adm]

Version

Version Description

Researchers from the World Bank coded the contents of court decisions relating to public interest litigation; scheduled castes, scheduled tribes, and other backward classes; and women's and children's rights that reached the Indian Supreme Court in the last forty years.

Version Date

2012-02

Scope

Notes

World Bank researchers coded the contents of court decisions relating to public interest litigation; scheduled castes, scheduled tribes, and other backward classes; and women's and children's rights that reached the Indian Supreme Court in the last forty years.

Producers and sponsors

Primary investigators

Name	Affiliation
Varun Gauri	World Bank

Producers

Name
India Supreme Court

Data Collection

Dates of Data Collection

Start	End
1961	2008

Data Collection Mode

Face-to-face [f2f]

Data Collection Notes

All data were extracted from a publicly accessible legal database: Manupatra (<http://www.manupatra.com/>

Disclaimer and copyrights

Disclaimer

The user of the data acknowledges that the original collector of the data, the authorized distributor of the data, and the relevant funding agency bear no responsibility for use of the data or for interpretations or inferences based upon such uses.

Metadata production

DDI Document ID

DDI_IND_2008_FRL_v01_M_WBDG

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