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Through Vikram Doctor and Titoo Ahluwalia I received an email about the medieval and abhorrent Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code which criminalizes “carnal intercourse against the order of nature” with punishment upto life imprisonment. Section 377 is being challenged by various groups in the Delhi High Court lead by Naz India, a […]

The gross miscarriage of justice in the Jessica Lal case is symptomatic of the fact that Indian socialists have an extremely warped notion of the role of the state. Nehru wanted to make steel; Indira added banks, insurance, mines, airlines and what not; and Manmohan wants the state to teach the unlettered and give jobs […]

While considering the merits of the judicial order to demolish over 18000 private buildings in Delhi, a few plain truths must be borne in mind. First and foremost is the fact that overbuilding and overcrowding are not caused by private greed. Rather, they are a result of poor transportation. There is surely enough land in […]

I have an article in The Times of India arguing that the “freedom of expression” is a meaningless right without private property rights. Where these rights are not protected, as in India, many find their freedom of expression violated - like the dancing ladies of Mumbai.

I have argued for the legalization of cannabis in The Times of India today, based on an “experiment with truth” that I undertook at Devprayag, where the Alaknanda and Bhagirathi meet, and the river thereafter assumes the name Ganga. Enjoy!

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh got it right in his first televised address to the nation when he said that it would be his top priority to get the government machinery to work properly, and that reforming this machinery would be his topmost priority. This first lecture by the PM went down well with Indians from […]

In response to Slavery is Freedom? Sauvik says that in his post, he was just talking of what Nepal’s monarch should do without taking up the general question of whether monarchies are better than democracies at doing the things that a government should be doing. It doesn’t seem like that to me, but […]

The Roman satirist Juvenal first raised the question “Who guards the guardians?” as a barb to Plato’s concept of a philosopher-king. For centuries the best (but still unsatisfactory) answer was to have ethical and upright officers as the guardians of society. But only with the advent of technologies like the video recorder and the mobile […]

It’s the Iranian style. And has a new supporter in Eugene Volokh. Sometime back I’d written about the death penalty and the right to life being compatible. Some of the comments, especially Ravikiran’s and Gautam’s are worth a relook.
Volokh takes the argument further.

I particularly like the involvement of the victims’ relatives in the killing […]

Can you defame somebody who’s dead? Well, some organisation called Yuvak Biradari is deeply upset with remarks made by Vijay Tendulkar on Gandhiji. The merits / demerits of the remarks are not relevant. What is, is the fact that Yuvak Biradari intends to sue Tendulkar for defamation. Without obviously caring to look up the law. […]

Fark.com is full of weird headlines and even whackier “discussions”, but once in a while something thought-provoking does indeed make an appearance. An example is this story from UK. Short version: Son finds out from mother that she was raped by their neighbour a week earlier. Son goes to confront rapist neighbour, who allegedly says […]

While reading this article, I came across a term that’s being used often nowadays: quasi-judicial. (It’s on the front page of today’s Economic Times as well)
What’s quasi? It’s really fancy Latin to mean “kinda, but not exactly,” so quasi judicial is to do with the judiciary to some extent, but not completely.
I’ve liked […]

Via Fark.com comes this story:

A judge today wiped out a couple’s debt of �384,000 which had spiralled out of control from an original loan of �5,750 due to “extortionate” interest rates.
Tony and Michelle Meadows, from Southport, Merseyside, faced losing their home after they were taken to court by London North Securities for failing to […]

Some months back, at dinner with bloggers in Bangalore, I broached a topic on the limits of libertarianism. What activities would you consider illegal (not allowable) even if you were libertarian? Let’s leave aside the obvious stuff like murdrer and theft.
What would you consider undefendable? Ordinary folks consider things like selling heroin and prostitution […]

or Sliding down a slippery slope and clambering back up
Ravikiran asks Why have the citizenship requirement at all? Why not simply have anyone stand for elections in India and become Prime Minister if they and their party win? Indians might elect Mrs. Thatcher as PM. (Maggie as PM? Good idea!)
As Ravi wants to slide down […]

The more corrupt the State the more numerous the laws.
~ Cornelius Tacitus (AD 55?-117?)
Quote source: Freedom’s Nest. Biographical info on Cornelius Tacitus
in Wikipedia.
Doesn’t look like this has been heeded in India. Bibek Debroy has done a lot of work in this area, estimating that there are 35,000+ laws in India (the exact number, […]

Anchit Sathi, a friend, who lives, studies and works in France, started an email discussion about the French Scarves Scandal. A couple of people including myself responded, this is the email transcript…

Some of you might have heard of the head scarf scandal in france that s been going on for quite a while now. for […]

On first read I found this very funny. Rahul Gandhi decides to take his girlfriend with him to the family vacation. A retired professor takes umbrage at the fact that the couple are not married and files a case under the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act, 1956.
The funny part is that he was upset at […]

I am glad you people liked my fable. But no - laws are not complicated because lawyers write them or interpret them. They aren’t complicated because lawyers are addicted to verbiage. They are complicated because our laws tend to micromanage the real world, something they shouldn’t do. The real world being complex, the laws […]

There was once a small law. So small that it consisted of only one small paragraph. When it spoke it had the clarity and simplicity of the young. Everyone understood what it meant, and they could interpret it.
The law protected property rights. It said that no one could take away anyone’s property by force, […]