Jurisprudence II

II

SPRING 2022-23

Professor Arun Sagar

Mohammad Nasar Nasir

Raghav Sengupta
Word limit for each question is 650-700 words excluding footnotes. You are
expected to utilize the module readings and class discussion at the first instance.
You are free to employ other sources, though you must provide proper citation.

Answer one question from each section.

Duration: 48 hours Total Marks: 15

Part A: This part is essential. It consists of one essential question. 1 8= 8 marks

1. A state-owned fabric factory in a posh Mumbai neighbourhood is being

decommissioned. An international construction business is purchasing it
under new statute that permits the government to sell its properties to
private entities. The land will be used to construct a luxury resort and a
shopping complex for the corporation. The decision was made in response to
demands from local residents who want exposure to international products
and have repeatedly accused plant workers of being common criminals and
vagabonds.

This deal is being opposed by the factory workers' union because it will
result in enormous layoffs. They further claim that the state administration
did not communicate with the workers or provide them with prior disclosure
of the large transaction. The union had been organizing protests outside the
factory for several months, preventing the acquisition. The state
administration dispatched police to disperse the protestors, resulting in a
violent encounter in which a union worker died as a consequence of a police
lathi charge. Several other workers were imprisoned. To break the deadlock,
the construction business has offered to hire all of the workers once the
 resort and mall open. Local residents have also banded together to endorse
this initiative.

You are a lawyer and have been approached by the union to offer advice as
to whether this is a proposal worth considering. Based on Hunt’s and Baxi’s
critique of the liberal legal order write a brief memo advising the union.

Part B: This section is essential. It consists of three questions. You need to

answer any one. Each question carries equal marks. 17= 7 marks

2. “Abstraction, criticized by both feminists and scholars of colour, is the

method that allows theorists to discuss liberty, property, and rights in the
aspirational mode of liberalism with no connection to what those concepts
mean in real people's lives. Much in our mainstream intellectual training
values abstraction and denigrates nitty-gritty detail.”

Identify the source of this quote. Do you agree with this quote? Justify your
reasoning by answering this with at least two modules within the course and
a real-life example to justify your answer.

3. One of the foundational ambitions of critical thinking in law in general and

Critical Legal Studies (CLS) in particular is to make law school teaching
more socially meaningful, ensuring maximum utilization of the possibilities
of law. However, in order to actualize this ambition, there has to be a re-
 imagination of the design of Jurisprudence, which lays the foundations of
law.
Citing provisions from any two areas of law of your choice which are
apparently claimed to be apolitical and non-ideological propose changes that
could maximize utilization of the possibilities of law but for the existing
pedagogical design in law schools generally.

4. While the medical model for understanding disability has been made
essential to make the society more accessible and participative, it discounts
the fact that barriers are not situated in the individuals, but rather in the
society itself. Taking the deconstructionist approach to the possibility of
justice critically analyse the definition of disability as enshrined in the RPDA
2016. How does it reify the hierarchical and ableist attitude in the society?
To what extent it is possible to do away with this particular model in policy-
making and how?