A Tribute to Justice Krishna Iyer

Author: Anjana Srinivasan, (2nd Year student of IIT Kharagpur Law School)

Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer has been hailed as the “judicial conscience of India” and credited with the responsibility of “humanizing law in India”. He was a ceaseless crusader of human rights and had a passion for compassion. He was a rare combination of a legislator, a minster and a judge.

Justice Krishna Iyer was born on November 15, 1915 to a leading criminal lawyer V.V. Rama Ayyar in Thalassery. He had his education at the Basel Mission School, Thalassery, Victoria College, Palakkad, Annamalai University and Madras Law College. He started legal practice in 1937 under his father in the Thalassery and appeared for workers and peasants in several agrarian struggle-related cases in his early years of practice.He became a member of the Madras Legislative Assembly in 1952. After the 1957 Kerala Assembly Elections, when the first Communist government in Kerala headed by E.M.S. Namboodiripad came to power, he held portfolios such as law, justice, home, irrigation, power, prisons, social welfare and inland navigation in the. He passed several pieces of people-oriented legislations during his tenure as a minister. He resumed his legal practice in August 1959 and continued the legal profession after he lost the 1965 Assembly election. He was appointed a judge of the Kerala High Court on July 2, 1968. He served as a Member of the Law Commission from 1971 to 1973.He was elevated as Judge of the Supreme Court on July 17, 1973, and retired on November, 14, 1980.

Justice Krishna Iyer’s has delivered landmark judgments during his tenure as a judge.His judgments are considered to be a thesis on the subject. His judgments have a human touch and are presented in an artistic manner. Let us have a look at some of his judgments that have created history and revolutionized the legal world.

He threw open the doors of the judiciary to every person of the country by emphasizing on the need for relaxing the rule of locus standi, in the case of Fertilizer Corporation Kamgar v. Union of India.

In Sunil Batra v. Delhi Administration, he declared the practice of keeping undertrials with convicts in jail as inhumane, which earned him the title of “Father of prison jurisprudence”.

In the case of Maneka Gandhi v. Union of India case, Justice Iyer noted, “Personal liberty makes for the worth of the human person. Travel makes liberty worthwhile.” He expanded the scope of Article 21 to include the liberty to travel.

The jurisprudence of bail was humanized by Justice Iyer, which has been a lasting contribution to the liberation of under trial prisoners. In G Narasimhulu judgment, he observed, “It makes sense to assume that a man on bail has a better chance to prepare or present his case than one rendered to custody. And if public justice is to be promoted, mechanical detention should be demoted."

By interpreting Article 21 of the Indian Constitution Justice Iyer’s Bench directed the State to provide free legal services to an accused person in custody. He profoundly contributed to prison jurisprudence and humanisation of the sentencing system in India.

His greatest contribution to our constitutional jurisprudence is his landmark judgment in Samsher Singh. In whether the President or Governor have independent power than the Cabinet Justice Krishna Iyer observed, "the President, like the King, has not merely been constitutionally romanticized but actually vested with a pervasive and persuasive role…he is not rival center of power in any sense…the President and Governor shall exercise their formal constitutional powers only upon and in accordance with the advice of their Ministers save in a few well-known exceptional situations like (a) the choice of Prime Minister (Chief Minister), restricted though this choice is by the paramount consideration that he should command a majority in the House; (b) the dismissal of a Government which has lost its majority in the House but refuses to quit office; (c) the dissolution of the House where an appeal to the country is necessitous."

Summing up in the words of Shri Soli J. Sorabjee, a former Attorney General of India:

"Mr. Krishna Iyer has a heart whose natural generosity and glowing warmth would scorch out any trace of malice or meanness. He cannot nurture a grudge towards any one, including unkind critics who have approached him with singular lack of humanity and understanding and who in learned tomes have raged and raged against the spreading of the light. Like Newman’s True Gentleman, he had too much good sense to be affronted by insults and was too well employed to remember injuries…There are judges who are more erudite than Justice Krishna Iyer, judges who have an excellent memory for Supreme Court and House of Lord citations, judges who can master the record of a case in a few minutes. But the one essential quality that distinguishes him from his judicial brethren and puts him in a class of his own is compassion. He took human suffering seriously and dispensed justice with compassion, which he possessed in abundance .”

His loss is a great loss to the legal fraternity.  He was not only a legislator, a minister and a judge but he was humane too. The humaneness made him stand apart from his peers. Let us all pay our tributes to such a great personality. Let us all pledge that we will be compassionate to our fellow human beings and work for the holistic development of the society at large.

Disclaimer: This blog or any post thereof is not to be considered to be in any way associated with the official stand of IIT kharagpur or RGSOIPL on the issues being discussed in the said post. The opinions on the blog are the authors own and should not be considered as legal advice.

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Of Assignments, Licenses and other Demons thereof

Author: Narayanan MH, 3rd Year student of IIT Law School, IIT Kharagpur

The title of this blog post amuses the author as much as it amuses its readers, as the author during his initial year in law school always got confronted by one question,
“What is the difference between an agreement and a contract?”

Being from a non legal family background the author answered:

“Section 2(h) of Indian Contract Act: an agreement enforceable by law is a contract”

But nearing the last few months of his legal studies, after few fruitful classes, discussions, and internships, the author learned that it is not as simple as stating section 2(h).

The author considers the Contract Act, 1872, to be one of the essential guide for a law student to begin his/her/third gender’s (Supreme Court now recognizes them) legal journey and hence would like to share his limited understanding of the answer to the above question before venturing into the title.

In layman’s words section 2 states that a Person A who for the purpose of getting assent of Person B proposes to do an act (includes abstinence) and Person B accepts it, then Person A becomes the promisor and Person B becomes the promisee. The accepted proposal becomes a promise.

For example the owner of this blog offering the author to publish his article and the author accepting the proposal makes it a promise.

Section 2(d) states consideration as an act, abstinence or promise of the promisee—Person B (past, present and future of doing) at the desire of promisor—Person A.

 

If a promise accepted by Person B has a counterpart of consideration to Person A it is an agreement. (Section 2(e)).

Continuing with the example stated above the author agreeing to pay Rs. 200  as publishing charge to the owner of blog makes the promise an agreement and the promise or act of paying Rs. 200 becomes consideration.

Now that agreement is understood the important section for understanding the meaning the section 2(h) (legally enforceable agreements) is section 10 of the Contract Act.

Section 10 seeks compliance of 4 conditions from an agreement to make it a contract:

·           Free consent (Section 14)

·           Competency of Parties (Section 11)

·           Lawful consideration (Section 23)

·           Lawful object. (Section 23)

Both the author and the blog owner are of legal age (competent) and gave free consent for the agreement. Hence, it is now enforceable by law becoming a contract. If the author does not pay Rs. 200 to the blog owner after this article gets published then the blog owner can move the court to enforce the contract.

From the above explanation, the author understood the difficulty in comprehending one of the shortest bare acts in law school and hence restricts himself to the question without going into further legal intricacies like consensus adidum, if the readers are interested they can do research on the following questions:

       Difference between void, voidable and illegal agreements and contracts?

       Difference between a deed and an agreement?

Coming back to the title, hindu mythology being one of the most fascinating mythologies of the world often portrayed demons as powerful as gods. In one such mythology, demons have the power of rising from the blood spilled from another demon and also have the power to deceive the seer. But the seer can find the demons if he knows what to look for amidst their varied appearances, hence the use of demons in the title.

The motive of the author here is to make the reader aware of these demons namely, assignments and license and their ability to deceive the seer.

Now that the author has researched and wrote this article, he cannot just like that give away this article to the blog owner for publication without being aware of his rights. The author by virtue of Copyright Act, section 14 has several rights from now on called “Bundle of Rights” (as used by the author’s Copyright law professor).

The 200 rupees given to the blog owner has 20-10 rupees note, likewise the bundle of rights have many individual rights like right to communication to public, right to translate, right to sell copies etc.

Assignments, licenses are the instruments used to legally transfer/permit the others to use one’s right.

License can be simply termed as permission from the way it is used in daily life like driving license, shop license etc. When a license is granted the main thing to be remembered is the licensee is not the owner, he just has permission to use the right.

If the author permits the blog owner to publish this article in his blog, the blog owner can do so only in this blog, while the author holds the rights to publish this article anywhere else.

Assignment on the other hand is assigning a right, if the author assigns the right to publish to this blog owner, then the author can never publish this article anywhere, but that does not take away the authors other rights in the bundle.

Thus, the essential elements in understanding licenses and assignments are that there are multiple rights, they can be either assigned fully or grant permission to others to use.

The reader must also note that there can be many varieties of this assignments and licenses based on the term of the contract like time, name of right, area, and others.

As an end to this article the author would term contract law as ‘Nothing’ with two quotes.

Quote 1: “You ain't seen nothin' yet.”  -AL JOLSON

Quote 2: “Nothing is an awe-inspiring yet essentially undigested concept, highly esteemed by writers of an existentialist tendency, but by most others regarded with anxiety, nausea, or panic.” - P. L. HEATH- 

Disclaimer: This blog or any post thereof is not to be considered to be in any way associated with the official stand of IIT kharagpur or RGSOIPL on the issues being discussed in the said post. The opinions on the blog are the authors own and should not be considered as legal advice.

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Legal Updates

In this new feature of our blog, we will be bringing you all that has happened in the legal world last week. We hope that the augmentation of these news will be helpful for all of us in updating ourselves.

Updates: 13th October to 18th October 2014.

The Last week started with the SEBI barring DLF and six executives from entering the securities market and from buying or selling securities for three years. This follows the failure of DLF to provide key information on subsidiaries and pending legal cases at the time of its 2007 public offering. This might be a crucial decision taken by SEBI and it remains to be seen what course the court takes on this issue.

The Delhi High Court laid down guidelines in examining child witnesses when it overruled a judgment of the Dwarka District Court acquitting the accused in the rape of a 3 year old girl. The Court referred to Section 118 of the Indian Evidence Act, which states that the testimony of a child can be considered as a basis of conviction provided the child understands the questions. The Court criticized the approach of the trial court which had held the testimony of the child to be inadmissible.

AIADMK supporters had a reason to cheer and celebrate as the Supreme Court granted bail to the party supremo J. Jayalalitha and suspended the trial court’s sentence on a condition that there will be no attempt to delay the criminal proceedings in the Karnataka High Court. There can be different stands of legal scholars on this but as for the courts are concerned, they would take reason and practicality in accord for now.

The CIC has held that during the pendency of a RTI application the relevant record should not be destroyed by the public authority even if it’s weeding out policy permits. The CIC has cautioned that such a destruction of record would be a serious breach of the Right to Information Act.

India says no to unilateral opinion. The Government of India has told the American authorities that they will not be co-operating USTR’s Special 301 Out of Cycle Review (OCR) process. Indian authorities have said that they would engage US in bi-lateral dialogue mechanisms under the new IP working group, rather than the unilateral process.

The e-commerce business and its meaning and limits are being tested in the courts now. In the last week development, the famous WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc.) filed suit of infringement and passing off against an Indian company. The question that was settled was regarding the ‘carries on business’ in cases of e-commerce. The Delhi High Court has concluded that the jurisdiction will be determined by the buyer’s place of residence. This was supported by the interpretation of section 134(2) of The Trademark Act and section 62(2) of The Copyright Act along with section 4 (“contracts would be completed at the place where the acceptance is communicated.”) of the Indian Contract Act.

And here is some new for the ‘firsts’. The Controller General of Patents Designs and Trademarks recently launched a couple of features on online search services for patents and trademarks to make the search process easier and provide transparent results. The features include innovative tools such as “Stock and Flow”—a utility which existed for trademarks, has now been extended to patents also. The Indian Patent Office is the first in the world to achieve such transparency.

Now, its time for some filmy news. The Allahabad High Court has issued a notice to the makers of the film ‘Haider’ on a PIL filed by the Hindu Front for justice on the grounds that the movie was against national interests. The petitioner have criticized that the movie shows the Indian Army in poor light and song sequence was shot in the Markand Sun Temple with actors dancing with their footwear.

Red Chillies Entertainments Private Limited’s film ‘Happy New Year’, starring Deepika Padukone and Shah Rukh Khan which is set to release in theatres across India on 24th October, has recently obtained a John Doe order from the Bombay High Court dated 14th October. It will be interesting to follow this case for what remains to be a potential area of IP.

We hope that this summarizes the last week legal News. Your comments and suggestions are welcomed.

Until next post of weekly News updates.

Anjana Srinivasan, (2nd Year student of IIT Kharagpur Law School)

For 'OFF Court.'

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