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LGD 2007 (1) - Baxi Biodata

Professor Upendra Baxi: Bio-Data

Professor Upendra Baxi, currently (since 1996) Professor of Law in Development, University of Warwick, served as Professor of Law, University of Delhi (1973-1996) and as its Vice Chancellor (1990-1994.) He has also served as: Vice Chancellor, University of South Gujarat, Surat (1982-1985), Honorary Director (Research) The Indian Law Institute (1885-1988.) He was the President of the Indian Society of International Law (1992-1995.)

Professor Baxi graduated from Rajkot (Gujarat University), read law in University of Bombay, and holds LLM degrees from University of Bombay and University of California at Berkeley, which also awarded him with a Doctorate in Juristic Sciences. He has been awarded Honorary Doctorates in Law by the National Law School of India University, Bangalore, and the University of La Trobe, Melbourne.

Professor Baxi has taught various courses in law and science, comparative constitutionalism and social theory of human rights at Universities of Sydney, Duke University, Washington College of Law, The American University; Global Law Program New York University Law School’ and at the University of Toronto. He was recently invited to deliver the Keynote Address at the international conferences of the Law and Society Association at Baltimore, the Critical Legal Studies Conference, Hyderabad and the Julius Stone birth centenary event at the University of Sydney Law School (July, 2007.)

He serves on the editorial boards of many leading Indian and overseas learned journals and has contributed well over 200 articles. His main publications include:The Indian Supreme Court and Politics (1979); The Crisis of the Indian Legal System (1982); Courage, Craft and Contention: The Indian Supreme Court in Mid-Eighties (1985); Towards a Sociology of Indian Law (1986); Liberty and Corruption: The Antualy Case and Beyond (1990); Marx, Law, and Justice: Indian Perspectives (1993); Inhuman Wrongs and Human Rights (1994); Mambrino’s Helmet? Human Rights for a Changing World (1994.) He has edited a number of volumes, including the Bhopal Case trilogy, published by the Indian Law Institute and Law and Poverty: Critical Essays (1989.)

Professor Baxi was invited to deliver a course of lectures by The Hague Academy of Private International Law, now published as Mass Torts, Multinational Enterprise Liability and Private International Law (2000). He has been recently invited by the University of Calcutta as a Tagore Law Professor. His more recent works are listed below, and include The Future of Human Rights (2006) and Human Rights in a Posthuman World (2007). He is currently engaged in research and writing on posthuman law and justice.

Professor Baxi has innovated social action litigation (miscalled as ‘public interest litigation’) before the Supreme Court of India. He has endeavoured to combine human and social rights activism with an active law teaching and research career.

Main Recent Publications

Books

— (2007) Human Rights in a Posthuman World: Critical Essays (Delhi: Oxford University Press)

— (2006) The Future of Human Rights, second revised and enlarged edition (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006; paperback edition with a new preface, forthcoming, 2007)

— and Ikeman, K (eds) (2006) Peoples’ Report on Human Rights Education (New York: People’s Decade for Human Rights Education)

Monographs

— (2005) Memory and Rightlesness: The J.P. Naik Memorial Lecture (New Delhi: Centre for Women’s Development Studies)

— (2006) ‘Development as a Human Right or as Political Largess?’ Does it Make any Difference? (Madras: Madras Institute of Development Studies)

Articles

2007

— (2007) ‘Failed De-Colonization and Future of Social Rights’, in Barkarz, D and Gross, A (eds) Social Rights (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

— (2007) ‘The Globalization of Fatwas amidst the Terror Wars against Pluralism’, in Benda –Beckman, K et al. (eds), Law, Power, and Control (Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh).

— (2007) ‘Re-Silencing Human Rights’, in Bhambra, G K and Shillman, R (eds) Silencing Human Rights (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).

— (2007) ‘Enculturing Law: Some Unphilosophic Remarks’ in Sitharaman, K and George, M (eds) Enculturing Law (Bangalore: Centre for the Study of Society and Culture, Tullika Publishing, in press).

— (2007) ‘Towards a General Assembly of Peoples’ in Symposium Issue ‘Envisioning A More Democratic Global System’, Widener Law Review 13, pp 401-418.

2006

— (2006) ‘Human Rights and Development: Law, Policy and Governance’ in Raj Kumar C and Srivastava, D (eds) A Report for all Seasons? Small Notes Towards Reading the Larger Freedom (London: Lexis-Nexis Butterworths) pp. 415-514.

  1. — (2006) ‘Protection of Human Rights and Production of Human Rightlesness in India.’ in Peerenboom, R and Chen, A (eds) Human Rights in Asia, France, and the US (London: Routledge) pp 384-412.

— (2006) ‘Siting Secularism in the Uniform Civil Code,’ in Rajan, R S and Needham, A (eds) Secularism in India (under publication; Durham, Duke University Press)

— (2006) ‘Justice of Human Rights in Indian Constitutionalism: Preliminary Notes’ in, Pantham, T and Mehta, V R (eds) Modern Indian Political Thought (Sage Publications, 2006) pp 263-284.

— (2006) ‘Politics of reading Human Rights: Inclusion and Exclusion within the Production of Human Rights,’ in Meckled-Garcia, S and Çali, B (eds) The Legalization of Human Rights (London: Routledge) pp 182-200.

— (2006) ‘What May the Third World Expect from International Law?’ Third World Quarterly 27, pp 713-725.

2005

— (2005) ‘The Gujarat Catastrophe: Notes on Reading Politics as Democidal Rape Culture,’ in Kababiran, K (ed) The Violence of Normal Times: Essays on Women's Lived Realities (New Delhi: Women Unlimited in association with Kali for Women) pp 332-384.

— (2005) ‘‘The War on Terror and the ‘War of Terror’: Nomadic Multitudes, Aggressive Incumbents, and the ‘New International Law,’ Osgoode Hall Law Journal 43, pp 7-43.

  1. — (2005) ‘Market Fundamentalisms at the Altar of Human Rights’, Human Rights Law Review 5, pp 1-26.

— (2005) ‘The Promise and Peril of Transcendental Jurisprudence: Justice Krishna Iyer’s Mortal Combat with the Production of Human Rightlesness in India,’ in Kumar, C R and Chockalingam, K (eds)Human Rights, Justice, and Empowerment (Delhi, Oxford University Press).

2004

— (2004) ‘Reflections on the Sixth Annual Grotius Lecture by Amy Chua’, American University International Law Review 19, pp 1255-1268.

— (2004) ‘The ‘Just War’ for Profit and Power: The Bhopal Catastrophe and the Principle of Double Effect’, in Bomann-Larsen, L and Wiggen, O (eds) Responsibility in World Business: Managing Harmful Side-effects of Corporate Activity (Tokyo: The United Nations University Press) pp 175-201.

— (2004) ‘An Honest Citizen’s Guide to Criminal Justice Reform: A Critique of the Malimath report,’ in The (Malimath) Committee on Reform of Criminal Justice System: Promise, Politics, and Implications for Human Rights (New Delhi, Amnesty International) pp 5-41.

— (2004) ‘The Rule of Law in India: Theory and Practice’ in Peerenboom, R (ed) Asian Discourses on Rule of law: Theory and Implementation of Rule of Law in Twelve Asian Countries, France and the United States (London: Curzon).

— (2004) ‘The Development of the Right to Development’, in International Development Law, the Encyclopaedia of Life Support Systems (Developed under the Auspices of the UNESCO, Eolss Publishers, Oxford<http://www.eolss.net>)

2003

— (2003) ‘The Colonial Inheritance’, in Legrand, P and Munday, R (eds) Comparative Legal Studies: Traditions and Transitions (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press) pp 46-75.

— (2003) ‘Global development and Impoverishment’ in Cane, P and Tushnet, M (ed.) Oxford Handbook of Legal Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press republished 2006) pp 455-482.

— (2003) ‘Operation Enduring Freedom: Towards a New International Law and Order? inAnghie, A et al. (eds) The Third World and International Order: Law, Politics, and Globalization (Leiden, Martinus Nijhoff) pp 33-46.

— (2003) ‘‘A Known but an Indifferent Judge’: Situating Ronald Dworkin in Contemporary Indian Jurisprudence’, International Journal of Constitutional Law 1, pp 557-589.

2002 etc

— (2002) ‘The Second Gujarat Catastrophe’, Economic and Political Weekly 11, pp 3519- 3531; also placed on the Website of the American Council of Social Sciences, New York.

— (2002) ‘The (Im) possibility of Constitutional Justice: Seismographic Notes on Indian Constitutionalism’ in Sridharan, E et al. (eds)India’s Living Constitution: Ideas, Practices, Controversies (Delhi, Permanent Black) pp. 31-63.

— (2001) ‘Too Many or Two Few Human Rights?’ Human Rights Law Review 1, pp 1-9.

— (2001) ‘Geographies of Injustice: Human Rights at the Altar of Convenience,’ in Scott, C (ed) Torture as Tort: Comparative Perspectives on the Development of Transnational Human Rights Litigation (Oxford: Hart Publishing.) pp 197-202.

— (2001) ‘Globalization: Rights amidst Risk and Regression’, in Making Law Matter: Rules, Rights, and Security in the Lives of the Poor’ IDS Bulletin 32, pp 94-102.

— (2001) ‘What Happens Next is Up to You’: Human Rights at Risk in Dams and Development, American University International Law Journal 16, pp 1507-1529.

— (2001) ‘The Failure of Deliberative Democracy and Global Justice’, in Enwezor, O et al. (eds) Democracy Unrealized: Documenta 11_Platform 1 (Ostfildren-Ruit, Hatje Cantz Publishers) pp 113-132.

— (2000) ‘Mass Torts. Multinational Enterprise Liability, and Private International Law’, Recueil des cours 276, pp 305-427.