CJI releases Restatements of Indian Law

Chief Justice of India S.H. Kapadia yesterday released a set of Restatement of Indian Law in three subjects; Legislative Privilege, Contempt of Court and Public Interest Litigation. Among the legal heavyweights present were Justice R.V. Raveendran who is also Chairman of the Supreme Court Project Committee on Restatement of Indian Law; G. E. Vahanvati, Attorney General for India and Professor S. Sivakumar who is Officiating Director of Indian Law Institute..Chief Justice of India S.H. Kapadia yesterday released a set of Restatement of Indian Law in three subjects; Legislative Privilege, Contempt of Court and Public Interest Litigation. Among the legal heavyweights present were Justice R.V. Raveendran who is also Chairman of the Supreme Court Project Committee on Restatement of Indian Law; G. E. Vahanvati, Attorney General for India and Professor S. Sivakumar who is Officiating Director of Indian Law Institute (ILI)..The herculean task to collect information on the development in these fields of law and to update it with current status, incorporating the changes introduced through law and judicial pronouncements was carried out jointly by Supreme Court Project Committee on Restatement of Indian Law and ILI..The Chief Justice of India is also patron of the Supreme Court Committee. There were three sub committees formed to look into each topic in particular which included Judges of Supreme Court, Delhi High Court, Senior Advocates and prominent Academicians according to PIB..The Restatement of Indian Law on legislative privileges was authored by Justice P. Sathasivam, on contempt of court by Justice A.K. Ganguly and on public interest litigation by Justice B.S. Chauhan. Lexis Nexis-Butterworths; CCH- a Wolters Kluwer business and Universal Law Publishing Co. have published the Restatement of Indian Law..Justice Raveendran told that the objective of the project was essentially to codify Supreme Court judgments on important areas where there were no statutes and clarification was required. He said the compilation of the judgments could be a reference material for lawyers and others, reports The Hindu. According to Justice Raveendran, a Restatement does not amend a law but authoritatively documents it as per provisions of the Act and the Supreme Court decisions and interpretation over the years..In the United States, the process of Restatement of Laws was started in 1923. Restatements of the Law in US were set of treatises on various subjects of law that contained huge volume information on the evolution and development of law. This task was carried out by the American Law Institute (ALI). According to the ALI website, “The founding Committee had recommended that the first undertaking of the Institute should address uncertainty in the law through a restatement of basic legal subjects that would tell judges and lawyers what the law was. The formulation of such a restatement thus became ALI’s first endeavour.”