Sedition in Liberal Democracies

Sedition in Liberal Democracies
Author: Anushka Singh
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 444
Release: 2018-02-16
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 019909182X

Examining the relationship between sedition and liberal democracies, particularly in India, this book looks at the biography of sedition laws, its contradictory position against free speech, and democratic ethics. Recent sedition cases registered in India show that the law in its wide and diverse deployment was used against agitators in a community-based pro-reservation movement, group of university students for their alleged ‘anti-national’ statements, anti-liquor activists, and anti-nuclear movement, to name a few. Set against its contemporary use, this book has used sedition as a lens to probe the fate of political speech in liberal democracy. The lived reality of the law of sedition in changing anthropological sites is juxtaposed with its positivist existence. Anushka Singh uses a comparative framework keeping in focus the Indian experience backed by fieldwork in Haryana, Maharashtra, and Delhi, and includes a comparative perspective from England, the USA, and Australia to contribute to debates on sedition within liberal democracies at large, especially in the wake of the proliferation of counter-terror legislations.

Sedition and the Advocacy of Violence

Sedition and the Advocacy of Violence
Author: Sarah Sorial
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 236
Release: 2013-03-01
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1136639829

This book employs the theoretical framework of ‘speech act theory’ to analyse current legislative frameworks and cases pertaining to sedition or the advocacy of violence and the issue of freedom of speech. An analysis of the relation between speech and action offers a promising way of clarifying confusion over the contested status of speech, which advocates violence as a political strategy. This account reflects an understanding of philosophical issues about both the nature of freedom and speech and how these issues can be applied to concrete legal problems. This approach will shed new light on the problems of the sedition laws and how they might be remedied by providing a conceptual account of the nature of speech and its relation to action. On the basis of J.L Austin’s account of verdictive and exercitive speech acts, it is argued that while all speech acts are ‘conduct’ in a narrow sense, not all of them have the power to produce effects. This philosophical account will have legal consequences for how we classify speech acts deemed to be dangerous, or to cause harm. It also suggests that because speech can evoke or constitute action or conduct in certain circumstances, modern versions of sedition laws might in principle be defensible, but not in their current form. On the basis of this account, it is argued that the harms caused or constituted by speech can be located in the authority of the speaker. Sedition and Violence Against the State: Free Speech and Counter-Terrorism will be of interest to students and scholars of philosophy of law and legal theory.

Against the State

Against the State
Author: Janet Coleman
Publisher:
Total Pages: 252
Release: 1995
Genre: History
ISBN:

From the involuntary martyrdom of Socrates to the voluntary martyrdom of the Christians in the Roman Empire, Janet Coleman examines the many different approaches to sedition and rebellion across the globes and the centuries.

Offend, Shock, or Disturb

Offend, Shock, or Disturb
Author: Gautam Bhatia
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 452
Release: 2016-01-14
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0199089523

Offend, Shock, or Disturb is a comprehensive examination of free speech under the Indian Constitution. It explores Indian free speech jurisprudence from a doctrinal, comparative, and philosophical perspective. Taking as its point of departure the constitutional guarantee of the freedom of speech and expression—Articles 19(1)(a) and 19(2) of the Constitution of India—the book discusses, clause by clause, the development of law from colonial times to present-day controversies. Issues relating to public order, sedition, obscenity and pornography, hate speech, film and online censorship, privacy and defamation, the contempt of court, the nature of speech and the relationship between free speech and economic structure, and the inter-relationships between them have been comprehensively examined. As free speech campaigns gain intensity by the day, the book presents the myriad understandings and limitations of the free speech law, and suggests possible pathways for the future.

Authoritarian Legality in Asia

Authoritarian Legality in Asia
Author: Weitseng Chen
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 409
Release: 2020-07-16
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1108496687

Provides an intra-Asia comparative perspective of authoritarian legality, with a focus on formation, development, transition and post-transition stages.

Dimensions of Constitutional Democracy

Dimensions of Constitutional Democracy
Author: Anupama Roy
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 234
Release: 2020-08-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9789811538988

This book examines a selection of themes that have become salient in contemporary debates on constitutional democracies. It focuses in particular on the experiences of India and Germany as examples of post-war and post-colonial constitutional democracies whose trajectories illustrate democratic transitions and transformative constitutionalism. While transformative constitutionalism has come to be associated specifically with the post-apartheid experience in South Africa, this book uses the transformative as an analytical framework to transcend the dichotomy of west and east and explore how temporally coincident constitutions have sought to install constitutional democracies by breaking with the past. While the constitution-making processes in the two countries were specific to their political contexts, the constitutional promises and futures converged. In this context, the book explores the themes of Constitutionalism, Nationalism, Secularism, Sovereignty and Rule of Law, Freedoms and Rights, to investigate how the contestations over democratic transitions and democratic futures have unfolded in the two democracies. It offers readers valuable insights into how the normative frameworks of constitutional democracy take concrete form at specific sites of democratic and constitutional imagination in Dalit and Islamic writings, as well as the relationship between state and religion in the writings of public intellectuals, political and legal philosophers. The book also focuses on specific sites of contestation in democracies including the relationship between sovereignty and citizenship in post-colonial India, free speech and sedition in liberal democracies, questions of land rights in connection with economic and political changes in contemporary contexts, and the rights of indigenous communities with regard to international conventions and domestic law. Given its scope, it will be of interest to students and scholars of political theory, political philosophy, comparative constitutionalism, law and human rights.

Populism and Liberal Democracy

Populism and Liberal Democracy
Author: Takis S. Pappas
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2019-04-02
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0192574892

Populism and Liberal Democracy is the first book to offer a comprehensive theory about populism during both its emergence and consolidation phases in three geographical regions: Europe, Latin America and the United States. Based on the detailed comparison of all significant cases of populist governments (including Argentina, Greece, Peru, Italy, Venezuela, Ecuador, Hungary, and the U.S.) and two cases of populist failure (Spain and Brazil), each of the book's seven chapters addresses a specific question: What is populism? How to distinguish populists from non-populists? What causes populism? How and where does populism thrive? How do populists govern? Who is the populist voter? How does populism endanger democracy? If rising populism is a threat to liberal democratic politics, as this book clearly shows, it is only by answering the questions it posits that populism may be resisted successfully.

The Truth Machines

The Truth Machines
Author: Jinee Lokaneeta
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Total Pages: 263
Release: 2020-02-26
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0472126474

Using case studies and the results of extensive fieldwork, this book considers the nature of state power and legal violence in liberal democracies by focusing on the interaction between law, science, and policing in India. The postcolonial Indian police have often been accused of using torture in both routine and exceptional criminal cases, but they, and forensic psychologists, have claimed that lie detectors, brain scans, and narcoanalysis (the use of “truth serum,” Sodium Pentothal) represent a paradigm shift away from physical torture; most state high courts in India have upheld this rationale. The Truth Machines examines the emergence and use of these three scientific techniques to analyze two primary themes. First, the book questions whether existing theoretical frameworks for understanding state power and legal violence are adequate to explain constant innovations of the state. Second, it explores the workings of law, science, and policing in the everyday context to generate a theory of state power and legal violence, challenging the monolithic frameworks about this relationship, based on a study of both state and non-state actors. Jinee Lokaneeta argues that the attempt to replace physical torture with truth machines in India fails because it relies on a confessional paradigm that is contiguous with torture. Her work also provides insights into a police institution that is founded and refounded in its everyday interactions between state and non-state actors. Theorizing a concept of Contingent State, this book demonstrates the disaggregated, and decentered nature of state power and legal violence, creating possible sites of critique and intervention.

Dimensions of Constitutional Democracy

Dimensions of Constitutional Democracy
Author:
Publisher:
Total Pages: 238
Release: 2020
Genre: Constitutional law
ISBN: 9789811539008

This book examines a selection of themes that have become salient in contemporary debates on constitutional democracies. It focuses in particular on the experiences of India and Germany as examples of post-war and post-colonial constitutional democracies whose trajectories illustrate democratic transitions and transformative constitutionalism. While transformative constitutionalism has come to be associated specifically with the post-apartheid experience in South Africa, this book uses the transformative as an analytical framework to transcend the dichotomy of west and east and explore how temporally coincident constitutions have sought to install constitutional democracies by breaking with the past. While the constitution-making processes in the two countries were specific to their political contexts, the constitutional promises and futures converged. In this context, the book explores the themes of Constitutionalism, Nationalism, Secularism, Sovereignty and Rule of Law, Freedoms and Rights, to investigate how the contestations over democratic transitions and democratic futures have unfolded in the two democracies. It offers readers valuable insights into how the normative frameworks of constitutional democracy take concrete form at specific sites of democratic and constitutional imagination in Dalit and Islamic writings, as well as the relationship between state and religion in the writings of public intellectuals, political and legal philosophers. The book also focuses on specific sites of contestation in democracies including the relationship between sovereignty and citizenship in post-colonial India, free speech and sedition in liberal democracies, questions of land rights in connection with economic and political changes in contemporary contexts, and the rights of indigenous communities with regard to international conventions and domestic law. Given its scope, it will be of interest to students and scholars of political theory, political philosophy, comparati ve constitutionalism, law and human rights.

Mobilizing the Marginalized

Mobilizing the Marginalized
Author: Amit Ahuja
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2019-06-26
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0190916443

India's over 200 million Dalits, once called "untouchables," have been mobilized by social movements and political parties, but the outcomes of this mobilization are puzzling. Dalits' ethnic parties have performed poorly in elections in states where movements demanding social equality have been strong while they have succeeded in states where such movements have been entirely absent or weak. In Mobilizing the Marginalized, Amit Ahuja demonstrates that the collective action of marginalized groups--those that are historically stigmatized and disproportionately poor ED is distinct. Drawing on extensive original research conducted across four of India's largest states, he shows, for the marginalized, social mobilization undermines the bloc voting their ethnic parties' rely on for electoral triumph and increases multi-ethnic political parties' competition for marginalized votes. He presents evidence showing that a marginalized group gains more from participating in a social movement and dividing support among parties than from voting as a bloc for an ethnic party.