SANTOSH PAUL was born in 1964 in Mercara, Coorg, and was educated in Kolkata, Coimbatore and Mumbai. He majored in Economics from the Elphinstone College Mumbai in 1985 and thereafter, graduated in Law from the Government Law College, Mumbai in 1988. He has been practising as a lawyer since the year 1988 in the Supreme Court and the Delhi High Court. He is the editor of The Maoist Movement in India: Perspectives and Counter perspectives (2012) and also editor of the book Choosing Hammurabi: Debates on Judicial Appointments (2013). He writes regularly on the Economic Times Blog titled Courts, Commerce and the Constitution. He has written articles in leading law journals, ‘The Right to Counsel’ ((1997) 8 SCC J-14); ‘Judicial Appointments Commission: The British Experience – Securing Independence and Merits’ ((2014) 8 SCC J-43) and ‘Was SCAORA a Radical Departure from Constitutional Principles’ (SCALE). He has authored the life histories of the Roman lawyer, Cicero and of F E Smith, Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for India which were published in Legal World. He has also presented papers on The Right to Food at the All India Seminar on Judicial Reforms, Confederation of Indian Bar; on TRIPS: Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Right at the International Pharmaceutical Conference held in Abu Dhabi in 2005; The Alaska Constitutional Experience: Containing the Maoist Insurgency at the Global Business and Human Rights 3rd UIA Business and Human Rights Commission Summit for Millennium Development Goals in March 2013.
Appointing our Judges is an anthology of articles and papers written by judges of the Supreme Court and High Courts of India and the United Kingdom, legal practitioners and eminent jurists on the contentious issue of judicial appointments. Set in the backdrop of the National Judicial Appointments Commission Act, 2014, the Constitution (99th Amendment) Act, 2014 and the subsequent plethora of petitions filed challenging its constitutionality, this book explores the pros and cons of both the collegium and the commission system of appointments of judges. Experiences from the UK with a successfully implemented Judicial Appointments Commission presents the reader with an international perspective. This work endeavors to bring forward the larger debate on judicial appointments spanning over six decades, capturing critical developments along the way culminating in the recent Supreme Court judgment. Striking down the Constitution (99th Amendment) Act, 2014 and National Judicial Appointments Commission Act, 2014, this judgment has determined the continuing course of judicial appointments in India, the judiciary’s place in the constitutional scheme of things and its independence.
