This article argues that there is a need to assess judicial compassion more favourably as it improves quality of legal reasoning and also allows judges to address gaps in the statutory framework for disability rights.
Author
Saptarshi Mandal, Assistant Professor, Jindal Global Law School, O.P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat, Haryana, India.
Summary
This article argues that judicial compassion is descriptively and analytically useful in thinking about the relationship between courts and disability rights in India. Against the tendency to dismiss judicial compassion as either opposed to the rule of law, or demeaning of the disabled, the article suggests, that we assess it more favourably, for two reasons.
First, compassion, on some philosophical and legal theoretical accounts, improves the quality of legal reasoning. Second, compassion allows judges to address gaps in the statutory framework for disability rights.
These interventions are executed through the category of colour blindness, which is both a metaphor for the law’s presumed dispassionate objectivity and an embodied state capable of evoking emotions in legal actors.
Published in: Jindal Global Law Review
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