BLS LLB 5 Years Sem 3 History of Courts 2024-25 - 75/25 Question Paper with Solutions

Two courts have the power to issue writs:

1. The Supreme Court, under Article 32, for the enforcement of Fundamental Rights only. This power is itself a Fundamental Right.
2. Every High Court, under Article 226, for the enforcement of Fundamental Rights and for any other purpose, that is for the enforcement of ordinary legal rights as well.

Both may issue habeas corpus, mandamus, prohibition, quo warranto and certiorari, or any direction or order in the nature of them.

The object of the Regulating Act, 1773 was to bring the East India Company's Indian administration under the control of the British Parliament, after the Company's misgovernment, the Bengal famine of 1770 and its own near-bankruptcy had forced it to ask the Government for a loan.

To that end the Act centralised the government in India by creating a Governor-General of Fort William with a Council of four and subordinating Bombay and Madras to him in matters of war and peace; provided for a Supreme Court at Calcutta to be established by royal charter; and checked corruption by forbidding the Company's servants to engage in private trade or to accept presents from Indians.

Under section 35 of the Advocates Act, 1961, the Disciplinary Committee of the State Bar Council on whose roll the advocate is entered is empowered to punish him for professional or other misconduct. It may reprimand him, suspend him from practice for a period, or remove his name from the roll, and it may also dismiss the complaint.

An appeal lies to the Bar Council of India under section 37, and from it to the Supreme Court under section 38.

The object of codification is to reduce the law on a subject to a single, systematic, written and authoritative enactment, so that the law is certain, accessible and uniform, and so that it can be known in advance by those who are governed by it and applied consistently by the courts.

In India the object had a further and particular purpose: to replace a confusion of personal laws, local customs, Regulations and English case law with one general law binding on all persons in British India, which is what the Charter Act of 1833 and the First Law Commission were created to achieve.

Meaning

The doctrine of separation of powers holds that the three functions of government, the legislative, the executive and the judicial, should be exercised by three separate organs, and that no organ should exercise the functions of another or control the persons who do.

Origin

The idea is traceable to Aristotle and to Locke, but its classical statement is by the French jurist Montesquieu in De l'Esprit des Lois (1748), who wrote it after studying the English constitution. His argument was practical rather than tidy: power must be a check upon power, because when the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person there can be no liberty, and if the judicial power is joined to either, the judge becomes an oppressor.

Purposes

1. To prevent tyranny by preventing the accumulation of all power in one hand.
2. To secure individual liberty.

4. The executive is barred from judicial functions in criminal cases by the separation of judicial and executive magistrates under the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973.
5. Judges enjoy security of tenure and salary so that the executive cannot reach them.

Where it is departed from:

1. The executive is part of the legislature: ministers must be members of a House (Article 75(5)).
2. The executive legislates through ordinances (Articles 123 and 213) and through delegated legislation.
3. The judiciary legislates in effect, since under Article 141 its declarations bind all courts, and it makes rules under Articles 145 and 227.
4. The legislature performs judicial functions when it punishes for breach of privilege or takes up a motion for a judge's removal.
5. The President exercises a judicial power in granting pardons under Article 72.

What it was

The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council was the highest court of appeal for the British Empire, sitting in London. For India it was the final appellate court for nearly two hundred years, from 1726 until 1949.

Origin and constitution

Appeals to the King-in-Council were provided for Indian litigants by the Charter of 1726, which allowed an appeal from the Governor-in-Council to the King-in-Council where the sum in dispute exceeded 1,000 pagodas. The Act of Settlement, 1781 allowed appeals from the Sadar Diwani Adalat. The Judicial Committee itself was constituted as a formal court by the Judicial Committee Act, 1833, on the initiative of Lord Brougham.

5. It produced judges of high quality, and a body of reasoned judgments which Indian courts still cite.
6. It trained Indian lawyers, since Indian counsel appeared before it and returned with the standards of the English Bar.

Criticism

1. It sat five thousand miles away, and an appeal was slow and very expensive, so it was in practice available only to the rich and to the Government.
2. Its judges had no first-hand knowledge of Indian conditions, and some decisions on personal law are criticised as having frozen custom into rigid rules.
3. It was a foreign court deciding the law of a country in which it did not sit, which became politically intolerable as self-government approached.

Constitution

The Bar Council of India is constituted under section 4 of the Advocates Act, 1961. It consists of members elected by the State Bar Councils, one from each, together with the Attorney-General of India and the Solicitor-General of India as ex officio members. It elects its own Chairman and Vice-Chairman.

Functions under section 7

1. To lay down standards of professional conduct and etiquette for advocates.
2. To lay down the procedure to be followed by its disciplinary committees and by those of the State Bar Councils.
3. To safeguard the rights, privileges and interests of advocates.
4. To promote and support law reform.
5. To deal with and dispose of any matter referred to it by a State Bar Council.
6. To promote legal education and to lay down standards of legal education in consultation with the universities imparting it and with the State Bar Councils.

Significance

The Bar Council of India makes the Indian legal profession self-governing: it decides who may be trained, who may be admitted, how an advocate must behave, and, on appeal, whether he may continue to practise. In discharging these functions it also controls the gateway to the profession through the All India Bar Examination, introduced under its rule-making power.

1. Original jurisdiction, and it was exclusive: disputes between the Federation and a Province or State, or between Provinces or States, in so far as the dispute involved a question of law or fact on which the existence or extent of a legal right depended. It could only make a declaratory judgment in such a suit.
2. Appellate jurisdiction: an appeal from a High Court where the High Court certified that the case involved a substantial question of law as to the interpretation of the Act of 1935 or of an Order in Council made under it. This was widened by the Federal Court (Enlargement of Jurisdiction) Act, 1947, which transferred to it the civil appellate jurisdiction of the Privy Council.
3. Advisory jurisdiction: the Governor-General could refer to it a question of law of public importance for its opinion.

Appeal from the Federal Court

An appeal lay from the Federal Court to the Privy Council in London, with leave, so the Federal Court was not the final court of appeal for India. That is the point most often missed.

Contribution

The facts

Swaroop Chand stood as a surety for the payment of the Company's revenue from Dacca, and acted as treasurer of the revenues of the Dacca provincial division. The balance due from him was fixed by the revenue authorities at Rs 10,000, which he disputed. On the authorities' own account he was afterwards found to be in default to the treasury to the extent of Rs 66,745. He was proceeded against by the revenue authorities for the arrears and confined.

(a) The defence taken by Swaroop Chand

1. That the account was disputed and had not been settled. His liability had not been determined by any judicial process, and until the enquiry into what he actually owed was complete, no sum could be said to be due from him.
2. That he was liable, if at all, only as a surety, and a surety cannot be proceeded against until the principal debtor has been called on to pay and has been found unable to pay.
3. That his imprisonment without bail for a sum which was still in dispute was illegal, and he sought the protection of the Supreme Court by habeas corpus.

The consequences

The decision was received as an interference with the collection of the revenue, which the Council regarded as the foundation of the Company's existence in Bengal. The Council protested that if every defaulting farmer could obtain bail from the Supreme Court, the revenue could not be collected at all. The dispute was resolved not by the courts but by Parliament: the Act of Settlement, 1781 expressly excluded revenue matters, and acts done in the collection of the revenue, from the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court.

(a) The facts: the Patna Case

Shahbaz Beg Khan, an Afghan in the Company's military service, settled at Patna and died childless, leaving considerable property. His widow, Naderah Begum, claimed the estate under a deed of gift (hibanama); his nephew, Bahadur Beg, claimed it as the deceased's adopted son.

Bahadur Beg applied to the Patna Provincial Council, which referred the matter to its law officers, the Kazi and two Muftis, to examine and report. The law officers went to the house, seized the property, reported the widow's deeds to be forged, and on that report the Council decreed the estate to Bahadur Beg, allowing the widow a one-fourth share only. She took sanctuary in a dargah and then sued in the Supreme Court at Calcutta against Bahadur Beg and the law officers for assault, battery, false imprisonment, breaking her house and depriving her of her property.

(b) The decision and its effects

The Supreme Court held that it had jurisdiction, on the footing that the defendants were persons employed by the Company, found the seizure and the report unlawful, gave judgment for the widow and awarded Rs 3,00,000 in damages. The defendants could not pay and were imprisoned.

Effects:

The alternative: the Cossijurah Case

Raja Sundernarayan, zamindar of Cossijurah, was heavily indebted to Cossinath Baboo, who sued him in the Supreme Court alleging that the Raja was employed by the Company in the collection of revenue and so within its jurisdiction. The Governor-General and Council, on the Advocate-General's advice, issued a general notification to all zamindars that they were not subject to the Court unless actually employed by the Company, and directed the Raja not to appear. The Court sent its Sheriff to arrest him; the Council sent sepoys, who seized the Sheriff and released the Raja. The Court then entertained an action against the Governor-General and members of Council personally, and they refused to appear.

Effects: the Court's process was defeated by force; the quarrel went to Parliament; Lord North said the judiciary and the political power were up in arms against each other; and the Act of Settlement, 1781 followed.

5. The Council referred the matter to its law officers, the Kazi and two Muftis, directing them to go to the spot, examine the parties and report.
6. The law officers went to the widow's house, seized the property, and made an inventory. It was alleged that the widow was treated with violence and turned out. They reported that her deeds were forged.
7. On that report, and without any further trial, the Provincial Council decreed the estate to Bahadur Beg, allowing the widow only a one-fourth share by way of dower.
8. The widow refused the share, took sanctuary in a dargah, and then brought an action in the Supreme Court at Calcutta against Bahadur Beg, the Kazi and the Muftis, for assault, battery, false imprisonment, breaking her house and depriving her of her property.
9. The Supreme Court assumed jurisdiction, holding the defendants to be persons employed by the Company. It found the proceedings of the law officers illegal, gave judgment for the widow, awarded her Rs 3,00,000 as damages, and, on non-payment, committed the defendants to prison.

(b) The consequences

5. It led to a parliamentary inquiry. A Select Committee of the House of Commons investigated the administration of justice in Bengal, and its report was the basis of the legislation that followed.
6. It produced the Act of Settlement, 1781, and several of the Act's provisions answer this case directly:

• the judicial officers of the country courts were protected for acts done in their judicial capacity;
• the Governor-General and Council were exempted for acts done in their official capacity;
• revenue matters were excluded from the Court's jurisdiction;
• persons were not to be subject to the Court merely as zamindars or farmers of revenue;
• Hindu and Muslim personal law was to be applied to Hindus and Muslims in matters of inheritance and succession;
• the Sadar Diwani Adalat was recognised as a court of record with an appeal to the King-in-Council.

4. Shortly afterwards Nandkumar was arrested. He was first charged, with Fowke and Radhacharan, with conspiracy, on the complaint of Mohan Prasad. While that matter was pending, he was indicted for forgery at the instance of Mohan Prasad, in respect of a bond alleged to have been forged in 1770, five years earlier and four years before the Supreme Court existed.
5. He was tried before the Supreme Court at Calcutta, before Chief Justice Sir Elijah Impey and the puisne judges, with an English jury. He was convicted and, under the English forgery statute which made forgery a capital felony (the papers cite it as the Act of 1728), was sentenced to death.
6. A petition for leave to appeal to the King-in-Council and for a reprieve until the King's mercy could be sought was refused.
7. He was hanged on 5 August 1775.

(b) Why it is called a judicial murder

1. An English statute was applied to an Indian for an act done before the Court existed. The forgery was alleged to have been committed in 1770; the Supreme Court was established in 1774. The English statute making forgery capital was applied retrospectively in substance, to a man who could not have known of it.

The consequences

The case began the enmity between the Supreme Court and the Governor-General in Council, established that the Court would apply English law to Indians in Calcutta, and, together with the Kamaluddin, Patna and Cossijurah cases, led to the Act of Settlement, 1781.

For full marks, cover: the source of the jurisdiction, Article 32 and Article 226 and the difference between them, each of the five writs with its meaning, grounds and leading case, the principles applied in adjudication, and the limits.

Origin

The writs are English in origin, prerogative writs issued by the King's Bench to control inferior courts and public officers. In India the Supreme Courts at Calcutta, Madras and Bombay, and after 1861 the three chartered High Courts, exercised the power. The Constitution made it a general power: Article 32 for the Supreme Court and Article 226 for every High Court.

• It does not lie: against a private individual or body having no public duty; to enforce a contractual obligation; against the President or the Governor (Article 361); against a State legislature to prevent it from legislating; nor to compel the exercise of a discretion in a particular way, though it lies to compel the authority to exercise its discretion.

3. Prohibition. Issued by a superior court to an inferior court or tribunal, forbidding it to continue proceedings in excess of its jurisdiction or in violation of the principles of natural justice. It is preventive and is available only while the proceeding is pending. It lies only against judicial and quasi-judicial bodies, never against administrative or legislative action.

4. Certiorari ("to be certified"). Issued by a superior court to an inferior court or tribunal to quash an order already passed. It is curative, where prohibition is preventive.

• Grounds: want or excess of jurisdiction; violation of the principles of natural justice; error of law apparent on the face of the record; and fraud.

1. Locus standi. Traditionally only the aggrieved person could apply. That rule has been relaxed for public interest litigation, so that any public-spirited person may move the court on behalf of those unable to do so, a development associated with S. P. Gupta v. Union of India (1981). In quo warranto, standing was always wide.
2. Alternative remedy. A writ is ordinarily refused where an equally efficacious alternative remedy exists, but that is a rule of discretion and not of jurisdiction, and it does not apply where a Fundamental Right is infringed, where the order is without jurisdiction, or where natural justice has been violated.
3. Delay and laches. Relief may be refused where the petitioner has slept on his rights.
4. Natural justice. The court insists on nemo judex in causa sua (no man a judge in his own cause) and audi alteram partem (hear the other side).
5. No disputed questions of fact. Writ jurisdiction is summary; a case turning on contested facts is left to a suit.
6. Conduct of the petitioner. He must come with clean hands and disclose all material facts.

For full marks, cover: the background and objects, the Bar Councils, classes of advocates, enrolment and disqualification, the right to practise, and then the disciplinary scheme in detail, with the punishments, the appeals and the case law.

Background and objects

Before 1961 the profession was divided into advocates, vakils, pleaders, mukhtars, attorneys and barristers, with different rights in different courts, and a practitioner enrolled in one High Court could not appear in another. The All India Bar Committee (1953) under Justice S. R. Das and the Fourteenth Report of the Law Commission (1958) recommended a unified national Bar with self-government. The Advocates Act, 1961 gave effect to those reports, repealing the Legal Practitioners Act, 1879 and the Indian Bar Councils Act, 1926.

2. Classes of advocates (section 16)

Senior advocates and other advocates. Designation is by the Supreme Court or a High Court with the advocate's consent, on the ground of ability, standing at the Bar or special knowledge or experience in law, and carries restrictions on acting and on taking instructions directly from a client.

3. Enrolment (section 24) and disqualification (section 24A)

Qualifications: citizenship of India, 21 years of age, a degree in law from a recognised university, and compliance with the Bar Council's conditions. Section 24A disqualifies a person convicted of an offence involving moral turpitude, or convicted under the Untouchability (Offences) Act, or dismissed or removed from service on a charge involving moral turpitude; the disqualification ceases two years after release or dismissal.

4. The right to practise (sections 29, 30, 33)

Section 29 makes advocates the only class entitled to practise law. Section 30 gives every advocate on a State roll the right as of right to practise throughout India, in all courts including the Supreme Court, before tribunals and before authorities. Section 33 bars others from appearing.

(d) Procedure. The Committee fixes a date, gives notice to the advocate and to the Advocate-General of the State, and hears both. It has the powers of a civil court (section 42) in summoning witnesses, requiring discovery and production of documents, receiving evidence on affidavit and requisitioning public records. Proceedings are judicial proceedings for the purposes of sections 193 and 228 of the Indian Penal Code.

(e) Orders (section 35(3)). The Committee may:

1. dismiss the complaint, or where the proceeding was begun at the Council's instance, direct that the proceedings be filed;
2. reprimand the advocate;
3. suspend him from practice for such period as it deems fit;
4. remove his name from the State roll.

A suspended advocate is debarred from practising in any court or before any authority or person in India during the period (section 35(4)).

2. Bar Council of Maharashtra v. M. V. Dabholkar (1976): advocates snatching briefs at the court door were held guilty of professional misconduct; the Supreme Court emphasised that the profession's standards are set by its public responsibility, not by commercial practice.
3. V. C. Rangadurai v. D. Gopalan (1979): an advocate who deceived an old, deaf client was found guilty; the Supreme Court, while upholding the finding, moderated the punishment, holding that discipline should also reform.
4. Supreme Court Bar Association v. Union of India (1998): the Supreme Court held that in exercising its contempt jurisdiction it cannot debar an advocate from practice, because punishment for professional misconduct is entrusted by the Act to the Bar Councils. The two jurisdictions are distinct.
5. Ex-Capt. Harish Uppal v. Union of India (2003): lawyers have no right to strike or to boycott courts, and such conduct may amount to professional misconduct.

For full marks, cover: what the dual system was, the two lines of courts in detail, the differences between them, the difficulties they caused, the steps towards reform including the Charter Act of 1833 and the Law Commissions, and the amalgamation of 1861.

What the dual system was

Between the establishment of the Crown's courts in the Presidency towns and the Indian High Courts Act, 1861, two systems of courts of entirely dissimilar origin existed side by side in British India:

1. The Crown's courts in the Presidency towns of Calcutta, Madras and Bombay, established by Royal Charters and Acts of Parliament, applying English law.
2. The Company's courts in the mofussil, that is the districts outside those towns, established by the Company under its Regulations, applying Hindu and Muslim personal law, custom, and the Regulations, and where none applied, justice, equity and good conscience.

2. The Company's courts

Civil. The Munsif and Sadar Amin courts for small causes; the District Diwani Adalat under a District Judge, established by the Cornwallis Code of 1793; the Provincial Courts of Appeal at Calcutta, Dacca, Murshidabad and Patna; and above them the Sadar Diwani Adalat, with an appeal to the King-in-Council in suits above a high value.

Criminal. The Magistrates in the districts; the Courts of Circuit, established by Cornwallis in 1790 and abolished by Bentinck in 1829, whose work passed to the Commissioners of Revenue and Circuit; and the Sadar Nizamat Adalat.

Judges. Covenanted servants of the Company, not lawyers, assisted by Indian law officers, the pandit and the maulvi, who expounded personal law. Bentinck's reforms of 1831 admitted Indians to the higher judicial offices of Sadar Amin and Principal Sadar Amin, an important reversal of the Cornwallis exclusion.

The law applied. The Regulations of the Presidency Governments, Hindu and Muslim personal law, and justice, equity and good conscience.

3. The differences

2. Different law for the same dispute. The outcome could turn on which court took the case, so a litigant's right depended on an accident of forum.
3. Forum shopping. A party who could bring himself within the Crown's court did so, or resisted being brought there, according to which law suited him.
4. Executive influence in the Company's courts. The Company's judges were its own servants, and until 1793 also its revenue collectors.
5. English law unsuited to Indian conditions was applied in the Presidency towns to persons unfamiliar with it, while the mofussil courts applied a personal law which was uncertain for want of reports.
6. Delay and arrears, especially in the Company's appellate courts.
7. No uniform precedent. With separate appellate lines there was no single authority whose decisions bound both systems.

5. The steps towards reform

4. The codes: the Code of Civil Procedure, 1859, the Indian Penal Code, 1860 and the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1861 gave the courts a single body of law to apply, which was the necessary preparation for a single hierarchy of courts.
5. The Government of India Act, 1858 transferred the government of India from the Company to the Crown, which removed the constitutional basis of the distinction: once the Company had ceased to govern, there was no reason for "Company courts" to exist at all.

6. The amalgamation: the Indian High Courts Act, 1861

The Act abolished the Supreme Courts and the Sadar Diwani and Sadar Nizamat Adalats and merged them into one High Court for each Presidency, established by Letters Patent in 1862 (re-issued 1865). Each High Court had a Chief Justice and not more than fifteen puisne judges, of whom at least one-third had to be barristers and at least one-third members of the covenanted civil service, so that both traditions sat on the same bench. The Crown was empowered to establish High Courts in other provinces.

For full marks, cover: the pre-British position, the beginnings in 1855 and the universities of 1857, the criticism of the system, the Bar Councils Act 1926, the Advocates Act 1961 and the Bar Council of India's role, the Law Commission's Fourteenth Report, the National Law Universities, the All India Bar Examination, and an assessment.

1. Before the British

Legal learning existed but not legal education in the modern sense. Under Hindu tradition the Dharmashastra was studied in the gurukul and tol, and the pandit who advised a court was a scholar of the Shastras. Under Muslim rule the madrasa taught fiqh, and the Kazi, Mufti and Maulvi were its products. In both, law was a branch of religious and scholarly learning, taught personally by a teacher to a pupil, and not a professional qualification granted by an institution.

4. The character of the system that grew up

Legal education became, and long remained, a part-time, lecture-based, examination-oriented affair. Classes were held in the early morning or the evening; teachers were practising lawyers who taught on the side; the course was two years after a first degree; there was no training in drafting, pleading or advocacy; and the method was the memorising of textbook propositions for an examination. The Radhakrishnan Commission on University Education (1949) described Indian legal education in severe terms, observing that it was neither producing scholars nor training practitioners.

5. Statutory intervention

1. Indian Bar Councils Act, 1926. Established Bar Councils for the High Courts and gave the profession a measure of self-government, but did not entrust legal education to it in any effective way.

2. The National Law Universities. NLSIU Bangalore, established in 1987 on the initiative of Dr N. R. Madhava Menon and opening in 1988, was the first: a residential, full-time, five-year integrated programme with the case method, moot courts, clinical work and a competitive national entrance. It was followed by NALSAR Hyderabad (1998), NUJS Kolkata (1999), NLU Jodhpur, NLIU Bhopal and more than twenty others, with entry now through the Common Law Admission Test (CLAT).
3. Clinical legal education. The Bar Council's rules made practical papers compulsory: moot court, drafting, pleading and conveyancing, professional ethics, and public interest lawyering, so that the degree includes training and not only doctrine.
4. The All India Bar Examination. Introduced by the Bar Council of India in 2010, it must be passed after enrolment before an advocate obtains a certificate of practice. Its validity was upheld and its place in the scheme settled by the Supreme Court in Bar Council of India v. Bonnie FOI Law College (2023), which also directed that the examination may be held before or after enrolment.
5. Postgraduate and research legal education developed through the LL.M., and the Indian Law Institute (1956) was founded to promote legal research.

For full marks, cover: the origin under the Charter Act of 1833, the four pre-independence Commissions and what each produced, the post-independence Commission and its nature, its working method, its major reports and their results, its limitations, and an assessment.

Origin

The Law Commission is a creature of the Charter Act of 1833, which was passed on the recommendation of Lord Macaulay and others that the laws of British India, then a confusion of Regulations, personal laws, English statutes and custom differing from Presidency to Presidency, should be inquired into and codified. The Act created a Governor-General of India with legislative power over the whole of British India, added a Law Member to his Council, and empowered the Governor-General in Council to appoint a Law Commission.

The pre-independence Commissions

First Law Commission, 1834. Chairman Lord Macaulay, who was also the first Law Member. Its work:

Fourth Law Commission, 1879. Reviewed the work done, recommended completion of the codification programme and the consolidation of existing law, and led to the Negotiable Instruments Act, 1881 and the Indian Easements Act, 1882.

The Law Commission after independence

The First Law Commission of independent India was constituted in 1955 under the chairmanship of Shri M. C. Setalvad, the first Attorney-General of India. Since then a Commission has been reconstituted, usually for a three-year term, by executive order of the Government.

Its nature. The Law Commission of India is a non-statutory, executive body. It has no statutory basis, and its reports are recommendatory only; the Government is free to accept, modify or reject them. It is normally chaired by a retired judge of the Supreme Court or of a High Court, with full-time and part-time members, ex officio members from the Legislative Department and the Department of Legal Affairs, and a research staff.

1. Fourteenth Report (1958), Reform of Judicial Administration, in two volumes: the most influential of all. It examined the whole judicial system, from arrears and the quality of the subordinate judiciary to legal education, and it is the foundation of the Advocates Act, 1961, the Legal Services Authorities Act, 1987 and much of the reform of court administration.
2. First Report (1956) on the Liability of the State in Tort.
3. Reports on the Code of Criminal Procedure, principally the Forty-first Report (1969), which produced the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973, including the separation of the judicial from the executive magistracy.
4. Fifth Law Commission, whose work on custodial and procedural matters fed the criminal law amendments of the 1970s and 1980s.
5. Reports on capital punishment, the Thirty-fifth (1967), which recommended retention, and the Two hundred and sixty-second (2015), which recommended abolition except for terrorism and waging war.
6. One hundred and fifty-fourth Report (1996) on the Code of Criminal Procedure, which led to the introduction of plea bargaining in 2005.

4. It has no power to review the working of the reforms it recommends.
5. Its recommendations on politically contentious subjects, the Uniform Civil Code, capital punishment, sedition, tend not to be implemented, which is a comment on the political system rather than on the Commission.

Assessment

The Law Commission is the principal institutional engine of law reform in India, and it has been so for nearly two centuries under two very different constitutions. The pre-independence Commissions gave India the codes, and with them the possibility of a single legal system and a unified judiciary. The post-independence Commissions have given it the Advocates Act, the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973, legal aid and a continuous, expert, published critique of its own laws. Its weakness, that it can only recommend, is inseparable from its strength, that it is expert and detached rather than political.