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Judicial Process
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LLM · Foundation Course
2025-26 Examination
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LLM Foundation Course Judicial Process 2025-26 Question Paper with Solutions
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First published on munotes.in on 12 August 2026.
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The question paper reproduced here is the paper as set by the University of Mumbai at the 2025-26 examination.
The answers in this volume state the law as it stands today, not as it stood when the paper was set. Four changes matter here. The National Judicial Appointments Commission and the Ninety ninth Amendment were struck down on 16 October 2015, so the collegium governs appointments and the Memorandum of Procedure remains unsettled. ADM Jabalpur was expressly overruled in Puttaswamy in 2017. On precedent, a Bench of seven judges overruled E.V. Chinnaiah on 1 August 2024 and a Bench of nine narrowed the reading of Article 39(b) on 5 November 2024, and both are more recent than any textbook on this subject. And on 19 November 2025 the core of the Tribunals Reforms Act, 2021 was struck down. Where a question turns on a position since changed, the answer gives it as it then stood and the present position, and says which is which.
Contents
The questions below are the paper as the University of Mumbai set it at the 2025-26 examination, in the order it was set.
MarksPage
The Paper as Set
The questions in this volume are the questions asked at the 2025-26 examination, reproduced as the University of Mumbai set them, in the order it set them. Nothing has been reworded, added or left out. Only the answers are ours. See the original question paper.
Duration 3 hours · Total marks 100 · 7 questions answered
How to use this volume
Solve the paper first, under exam conditions and against the clock. Then read the answers here and mark your own. Reading a solution before attempting the question feels productive and teaches very little, because recognising an answer is not the same as being able to write one.
1.Justice Cardozo observed that "the judicial process at its highest reaches is not discovery, but creation." Examine how the Indian Judiciary has utilized its creative law-making power to evolve new socio-economic rights under various provision of the Constitution.[25]
Answer
For full marks, cover: what the quotation displaces; the constitutional instruments that make creation possible in India; then the socio economic rights one by one, since that is the specific subject; and the limits.
The quotation is Cardozo's rejection of the declaratory theory. Blackstone's judge was the living oracle who discovered a law that already existed. Cardozo's answer in The Nature of the Judicial Process (1921) is that in the cases which matter, where the colours do not match and there is no decisive precedent, the judge creates. Lord Reid later put it more bluntly, calling the declaratory account a fairy tale.
Four instruments make creation possible in India, and socio economic rights required all four.
Article 21, whose seventeen words are general enough to receive content the framers did not name.
Part IV with Article 37, which states the socio economic programme and declares it fundamental in the governance of the country while withholding enforcement. The creative step was to use the non enforceable Part to give content to the enforceable one.
Article 32, which makes the remedy a fundamental right and, after S.P. Gupta v. Union of India, 1981 Supp SCC 87, is available to a bona fide stranger acting for those who cannot come. Without it the intended beneficiaries of socio economic rights could not have reached a court.
Article 141, which makes the declaration binding on all courts at once.
The doctrinal foundation was laid in two steps. Maneka Gandhi v. Union of India, (1978) 1 SCC 248, held that procedure under Article 21 must be right, just and fair and that Articles 14, 19 and 21 must be read together. Minerva Mills v. Union of India, (1980) 3 SCC 625, held that the harmony and balance between Parts III and IV is itself a basic feature, which is what licensed the use of directive principles to construe fundamental rights.
The socio economic rights, each with its provision and its case.
The right to live with human dignity, the parent of the rest, from Francis Coralie Mullin v. Administrator, Union Territory of Delhi, (1981) 1 SCC 608, where the Court held that the right to life means more than mere animal existence and includes the bare necessaries of life.
The right to livelihood, from Article 21 read with Article 39(a), in Olga Tellis v. Bombay Municipal Corporation, (1985) 3 SCC 545, where pavement dwellers facing eviction were held entitled to be heard because deprivation of livelihood amounts to deprivation of life.
The right to education, from Articles 21, 41 and 45, in Mohini Jain v. State of Karnataka, (1992) 3 SCC 666, and Unni Krishnan v. State of Andhra Pradesh, (1993) 1 SCC 645. Parliament then enacted Article 21A by the Constitution (Eighty sixth Amendment) Act, 2002, followed by the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009.
The right to health and to humane conditions of work, from Articles 21, 39(e), 41, 42 and 43, in Bandhua Mukti Morcha v. Union of India, (1984) 3 SCC 161, on bonded labour, and in the compensation and medical care cases that followed.
The right to a clean and healthy environment, from Article 21 with Articles 48A and 51A(g), in Vellore Citizens Welfare Forum v. Union of India, (1996) 5 SCC 647, which absorbed the precautionary and polluter pays principles into domestic law. Its most recent extension is M.K. Ranjitsinh v. Union of India, decided on 21 March 2024, recognising a right against the adverse effects of climate change under Articles 14 and 21.
The right to shelter and to legal aid, the latter from Article 39A read with Article 21, which produced the requirement of free legal services to an accused unable to engage counsel.
Privacy, which is the modern member of the family, in K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India, (2017) 10 SCC 1, followed by the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023.
Two features of this body of law deserve emphasis because they answer the standard objection.
First, the creation was ratified. Article 21A, the Act of 2009, the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace Act, 2013, after Vishaka v. State of Rajasthan, (1997) 6 SCC 241, and the Act of 2023 after Puttaswamy are all instances of Parliament adopting what the Court had declared. A creative power whose products are enacted by the legislature is not usurpation.
Second, the Court supplied remedies as well as rights, because a socio economic right without machinery is an aspiration. Compensation in public law came in Rudul Sah v. State of Bihar, (1983) 4 SCC 141, and Nilabati Behera v. State of Orissa, (1993) 2 SCC 746; fact finding commissions in Bandhua Mukti Morcha; and continuing mandamus in Vineet Narain v. Union of India, (1998) 1 SCC 226.
The limits are structural and the answer should state them. A court can declare a right to education and cannot build a school, which is why Unni Krishnan needed Article 21A and a statute to become effective. It cannot appropriate money. And it will not construct a statutory regime, as Supriyo v. Union of India, decided on 17 October 2023, held when declining to recognise same sex marriage. Divisional Manager, Aravali Golf Club v. Chander Hass, (2008) 1 SCC 683, states the general limit.
Each right with its case and its facts
Francis Coralie Mullin v. Administrator, Union Territory of Delhi, (1981) 1 SCC 608. A detenu under the COFEPOSA Act challenged restrictions on interviews with her lawyer and her young daughter. Bhagwati J. held that the right to life is not confined to protection of limb or faculty, that it includes the right to live with human dignity and all that goes with it, namely the bare necessaries of life such as adequate nutrition, clothing and shelter and facilities for reading, writing and expressing oneself. That decision is the parent of the socio-economic line.
Olga Tellis v. Bombay Municipal Corporation, (1985) 3 SCC 545. Pavement and slum dwellers faced eviction under the Bombay Municipal Corporation Act. The Court held that the right to livelihood is an integral facet of the right to life, since no person can live without the means of living, and required a fair procedure including a hearing.
Unni Krishnan v. State of Andhra Pradesh, (1993) 1 SCC 645. Following Mohini Jain v. State of Karnataka, (1992) 3 SCC 666, the Court held that the right to education flows from Article 21 read with Articles 41 and 45, up to the age of fourteen years. Parliament then enacted Article 21A by the Constitution (Eighty sixth Amendment) Act, 2002, and the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009.
Bandhua Mukti Morcha v. Union of India, (1984) 3 SCC 161. On bonded labour in the stone quarries of Faridabad, the Court derived humane conditions of work and the dignity of the worker from Article 21 read with Articles 39(e), 41 and 42, and held that Article 32 prescribes no particular form of proceeding, appointing commissioners to find the facts.
Vellore Citizens Welfare Forum v. Union of India, (1996) 5 SCC 647. Tanneries in Tamil Nadu were polluting agricultural land and drinking water. The Court absorbed the precautionary principle and the polluter pays principle into domestic law by reading Articles 21, 47, 48A and 51A(g) with international instruments.
M.K. Ranjitsinh v. Union of India, decided on 21 March 2024, recognised a right against the adverse effects of climate change under Articles 14 and 21.
Conclusion. Cardozo's proposition is demonstrably true of Indian socio economic rights, because none of them is in the text as an enforceable guarantee and all of them are now enforceable. The creative method was the same throughout: read Article 21 as more than physical survival, take content from Part IV notwithstanding Article 37, open the door under Article 32 to those who could not otherwise come, and make the result binding under Article 141. The strongest defence of that method is not that the results were good but that they were adopted by Parliament in Article 21A and in three statutes, and its clearest limit is that every one of those rights needed the political organs to fund and administer it before it changed anything.
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