Law and Case Commentaries

  =================== Jay Shree Ram! These are some notes from Ayodhya Verdict regarding legal interpretations of certain statutory provisions: Read more Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Section 145: Section 145(1) can be invoked on the satisfaction of the Magistrate that ―a dispute likely to cause a breach of the peace exists… ‖ . The provision relates to disputes regarding possession of land or water or its boundaries which may result in breach of the peace. The function of the Magistrate is not to go into questions of title, but to meet the urgency of the situation by maintaining the party in possession. The Magistrate is empowered to call upon the parties to put in written statements in support of their claim to “actual possession”. Such an order is to be served as a summons upon the parties. The Magistrate is to peruse the statements, hear the parties and weigh the evidence, in order to ascertain who was in possession at th...

  =================== Jay Shree Ram! These are some notes from Ayodhya Verdict regarding legal interpretations of certain statutory provisions: Read more Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Where there exists an express deed of dedication, the legal personality vests in the pious purpose of the founder. The idol is the material embodiment of the pious purpose and is the site of jural relations. There are instances of the submergence or even destruction of the idol inspite of which it has been held that the legal personality continues to subsist. Even if a testator were to make a dedication to a religious purpose but the idol did not exist at the time the dedication was made or the manifestation of the divine was not in the form of the idol, but in the form of some other object of religious significance, the legal personality would continue to vest in the pious purpose of the dedication itself. A Swayambhu deity is a manifestation of God tha...

  =================== Jay Shree Ram! These are some notes from Ayodhya Verdict regarding legal interpretations of certain statutory provisions: Read more Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Principle as to personality of institutions.- Apart from natural persons and corporations, which are recognised by English law, the position under Hindu law is that if an endowments is made for a religious or charitable institution, without the instrumentality of a trust, and the object of the endowment is one which is recognised as pious, being either religious or charitable under the accepted notions of Hindu law, the institution will be treated as a juristic person capable of holding property. – Justice B K Mukhergea Upon making an endowment, the donor relinquishes all claims to the endowed property. The property now vests in the pious purpose at the heart of the endowment which is recognised as a legal person. The idol forms the material manifestation of th...

  =================== Jay Shree Ram! These are some notes from Ayodhya Verdict regarding legal interpretations of certain statutory provisions: Read more Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 The Hindu practice of dedicating properties to temples and idols had to be adjudicated upon by courts for the first time in the late nineteenth century. The doctrine that Hindu idols possess a distinct legal personality was adopted by English judges in India faced with the task of applying Hindu law to religious endowments. Property disputes arose and fuelled questions about the ownership of the properties. Two clear interests were recognised as subjects of legal protection. First, there existed the real possibility of maladministration by the shebaits (i.e. managers) where land endowed for a particular pious purpose, ordinarily to the worship of an idol, was poorly administered or even alienated. Second, where the land was dedicated to public worship, there existed the t...

  =================== Jay Shree Ram! These are some notes from Ayodhya Verdict regarding legal interpretations of certain statutory provisions: Read more Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 The most widely recognised artificial legal person is the corporation in Company law. The idea of treating a collective of individuals as a single unit for the purposes of identification in law is as old as human civilisation itself. The jurisprudential concept of treating a collective of entrepreneurs as a single unit for the purposes of legal recognition was already well established by the time the first business corporations came into existence and did not warrant examination by the courts. The legal personality of the corporation was originally granted by a positive act of the government. In later years, as incorporation became the preferred method of doing business, corporate personality was conferred by general statutes of incorporation which permitted any person to incorpor...

  =================== Jay Shree Ram! These are some notes from Ayodhya Verdict regarding legal interpretations of certain statutory provisions: Read more Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Legal personality constitutes recognition by the law of an object or corpus as an embodiment of certain rights and duties. Rights and duties which are ordinarily conferred on natural persons are in select situations, conferred on inanimate objects or collectives, leading to the creation of an artificial legal person. An artificial legal person is a legal person to the extent the law recognises the rights and duties ascribed to them, whether by statute or by judicial interpretation. Salmond presciently notes that the rights and duties conferred on artificial legal persons ultimately represent the interests and benefits of natural persons. In fact, it is precisely because of the substantial benefits derived by natural persons from such objects or collectives that legislators and courts are c...

  Jay Shree Ram! These are some notes from Ayodhya Verdict regarding legal interpretations of certain statutory provisions: Read more Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 The power of legal systems to recognise and hence also to deny legal personality has been used over history to wreak fundamental breaches of human rights. Legal systems across the world evolved from periods of darkness where legal personality was denied to natural persons to the present day where in constitutional democracies almost all natural persons are also legal persons in the eyes of the law. Legal systems have also extended the concept of legal personality beyond natural persons. This has taken place through the creation of the “artificial legal person” or “juristic person”, where an object or thing which is not a natural person is nonetheless recognised as a legal person in the law. Persons are the substance of which rights and duties are the attributes. It is only in this respect that persons possess juridical ...