05 February 2025
America’s First Religious Public School?
On 24 January 2025, the US Supreme Court granted certiorari to a case that could fundamentally reshape the nature of public education in the United States by permitting public schools – so called charter schools – to become religious in character. However, this blog argues that this case is not merely about school choice or religious freedom, but rather reflects the culmination of “private disestablishment”— a legal phenomenon where entities that operate at the blurred boundary between public and private recast themselves as entirely private actors while performing public functions. By doing so, they secure public benefits—such as funding and regulatory advantages—without bearing the constitutional obligations, such as anti-discrimination mandates or religious neutrality, that typically constrain public institutions. Continue reading >>
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06 August 2024
A Setback for Homeless Rights in the United States
On June 28, 2024, the United States Supreme Court handed down its decision in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson (Grants Pass), its most significant case on homelessness in decades. The decision overturned the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal’s 2018 decision in Martin v. Boise (Martin), which mandated that cities allow unhoused individuals to sleep in public spaces when shelter beds were not available. The decision fails to consider the root causes of homelessness in the United States and exacerbates the already fragmented regulatory landscape governing the vulnerable community of the unhoused. Continue reading >>
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19 April 2024
The Right to Education and Democratic Backsliding in India
Since the election of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to power in the federal elections in India in 2014, the country’s performance in key indicators of democratic quality has suffered. Over the course of its two terms in power, the party has sought to subvert key institutions for accountability, enact an ethno-cultural majoritarian electoral agenda, and use federal law enforcement agencies against their political opponents. While there is extensive literature on the erosion of civil-political rights in the past ten years, the effects of the BJP government on social rights like education and healthcare remain under-explored. Therefore, in this post, I explore three striking dimensions of primary educational policy under the BJP government. Continue reading >>
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11 October 2019
Miller/Cherry 2 Goes to Kashmir
There are certain principles which emerge from Miller/Cherry 2 which are meaningful for cases involving judicial review of executive powers. The application of these principles, especially in cases where the line between the executive and legislature is thin (resulting in what Bagehot described as the ‘fusion of powers’), can guide comparative lawyers to hitherto underexplored areas of administrative law accountability of the executive to legislative bodies. Continue reading >>
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