Two Supreme Courts, two imperfect democracies

The Indian Supreme Court, for various reasons, does not seem to lie within the scope of this accountability

The two Supreme Courts of the two largest democratic polities in the world were both in the news this week. The United States Supreme Court overturned a fifty-year-old precedent that had read the right to privacy — and thereby to, among other things, abortion — into that country’s antiquated and impossible-to-amend constitution.

The Supreme Court of India, meanwhile, put itself right in the middle of the most controversial aspects of contemporary Indian politics in at least two different ways. While dismissing a case related to the 2002 riots in Gujarat, the Court’s judgment was worded such that some, perhaps incorrectly, interpreted