Constitutional Framework of Social Justice — Landmark Judgments
Landmark Judgments
State of Madras v. Champakam Dorairajan
1951This was the first major judgment on reservation, where the Supreme Court struck down a government order providing communal reservation in educational institutions, holding it…
M.R. Balaji v. State of Mysore
1963The Supreme Court, while upholding the principle of reservation, put a cap of 50% on total reservations, stating that 'reservation must be reasonable'. It also introduced the…
Indra Sawhney & Others v. Union of India
1992Also known as the 'Mandal Commission case', this is a landmark judgment that upheld the constitutional validity of 27% reservation for Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in central…
M. Nagaraj v. Union of India
2006This judgment upheld the constitutional validity of the 77th, 81st, 82nd, and 85th Amendments, which provided for reservation in promotions for SCs/STs, carry-forward rule for…
Ashoka Kumar Thakur v. Union of India
2008This case dealt with the constitutional validity of the 93rd Amendment Act, 2005, which inserted Article 15(5), enabling the State to make special provisions for the advancement…
Jarnail Singh v. L.N. Gupta
2018The Supreme Court clarified and diluted some aspects of the M. Nagaraj judgment. It held that the requirement of collecting quantifiable data on 'backwardness' of SC/ST…
Dr. Jaishri Laxmanrao Patil v. The Chief Minister
2021This case saw the Supreme Court strike down the Maharashtra State Reservation for Socially and Educationally Backward Classes (SEBC) Act, 2018, which provided reservation to the…
Janit P. Kumar v. Union of India (EWS Reservation Judgment)
2022A 3:2 majority of the Supreme Court upheld the constitutional validity of the 103rd Constitutional Amendment Act, 2019, which introduced 10% reservation for Economically Weaker…