South Asia Brown Bag Series Fall 2019: The Indian Supreme Court and the Regulatory State

Administrative and regulatory tribunals in India are the site of a deep and prolonged contestation between the three major organs of the Indian state. Judicial review of legislation that creates regulatory tribunals is aimed at reining in the growth of executive power; consequent push-back from the government has taken the form of innovative and dubious ways to circumvent legislative and judicial controls. Focusing particularly on the issue of appointments to regulatory tribunals, this presentation, drawn from my dissertation research, will identify and engage with the legal issues that arise from this contestation. I locate this research within the larger body of literature on the regulatory state of the global south, and a framework that specifically incorporates the individual challenges presented by Indian constitutionalism.
Bio:
Raeesa Vakil is a J.S.D. candidate at Yale Law School, where she earned her LL.M. degree in 2016. Previously, she was a research scholar at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi, where she worked on issues concerning local government and Indian constitutional law. Raeesa is a practicing advocate and was admitted to the Bar in India in 2012, after which she worked as an advocate in chambers at the Indian Supreme Court, primarily on cases concerning public interest and civil liberties, and as an associate counsel in a major Indian law firm, advising corporate clients on private equity, mergers, and acquisitions.
Raeesa has published on questions of Indian constitutional law with a particular focus on the jurisdiction, structure, and practice of the Indian Supreme Court. Her most recent publication was a chapter on the Indian Supreme Court’s jurisdiction, in The Oxford Handbook of the Indian Constitution (edited by Pratap Bhanu Mehta, Madhav Khosla, and Sujit Choudhry).
Raeesa’s dissertation focuses on the emergence of the Indian regulatory state, with particular reference to the role played by the judiciary in the development, functioning, and review of regulatory bodies in India. Her aim is to develop an analytical framework within which the functioning of regulatory bodies of the global south, and their interaction with constitutional institutions, can be better understood.