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This paper examines the applicability of §17(2)(vi) of the Registration Act, 1908, which exempts certain court orders from mandatory registration to scheme orders issued by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) under §§230–232 of the Companies Act, 2013 (‘2013 Act’). While High Court orders under the analogous provisions of the Companies Act, 1956 (‘1956 Act’), were consistently exempt, ambiguity persists post-2013 due to the NCLT’s status as a tribunal and occasional judicial conflation of registration fees with stamp duties. Such legal uncertainty is antithetical to the requirement of transactional and operational efficiency underpinning every restructuring process. Through doctrinal analysis, the paper argues that NCLT scheme orders are exempt from registration fees basis three grounds: (i) the enduring applicability of 1956 Act interpretations, preserved by §465(2)(b) of the 2013 Act and §6 of the General Clauses Act, 1897; (ii) the judicial nature of NCLT proceedings, akin to court functions, as supported by §424 of the 2013 Act and case law; and (iii) alignment with the Registration Act’s dual objectives of ensuring transparent property records and securing revenue, without necessitating registration. Contra decisions are critiqued as peripheral and lacking reasoned analysis. The paper emphasizes the necessity for legal clarity in a domain with much commercial significance, concluding that NCLT scheme orders are exempt from registration fees, consistent with established statutory provisions and judicial precedent.

In 2012, India amended the Copyright Act, 1957, to permit the conversion of copyrighted works into accessible formats by persons with disabilities and third parties on their behalf. Subsequently adopted internationally through the Marrakesh Treaty, such exceptions seek to prevent copyright from impeding education, communication, and cultural participation. Despite being a radical development in copyright and disability law, these exceptions establish a post-publication conversion regime, placing the burden of providing accessible books on volunteering third parties and the vulnerable group themselves. There is no legal mandate to publish accessible books ex ante, which are perceived as low in demand and requiring significant production expenditure. This Article argues that independent post-publication conversion, in place of accessible mainstream publishing, ultimately normalises inaccessibility. It reinforces the proprietary nature of copyright, treating rightsholders’ economic interests as sacrosanct and expansive, subject only to limited exceptions. The Article makes the case that, in order to fully realise the right to read, accessible publishing needs to be integrated at the production stage so as to increase the availability of accessible books without additional delays or financial and logistical hurdles. This is only possible if copyright’s normative vision is expanded beyond the limited exceptions paradigm to incorporate democratic values and prioritise wider participation in cultural exchange.

Despite discordant voices within the discipline, scholars may be in general agreement that the fundamental motivations behind the Third World Approaches to International Law (‘TWAIL’) have been resistance against the universalisation of international law (‘IL’) and grounding IL discourse to the ‘have-nots’. The evolution of TWAIL is descriptive of its uncertain relationship with sovereignty and the statist foundations guiding IL. With the global rise of weaponised conservatism and a disregard for the Western liberal framework, TWAIL must deliver on its unfulfilled promises. In the larger backdrop of the diminishing relevance of IL, there is a need to reconcile the seemingly incompatible motivations of TWAIL with the statist realities of IL. The paper attempts to make this reconciliation by circling back TWAIL discourse to accept the rehabilitation of the ‘Third World State’ as the ethical actor of IL. This is simultaneously complemented by the rise of the TWAIL lawyer as the fulcrum of accountability between the have-nots and the Third World State.

Indian constitutional courts’ murky jurisprudence in conducting judicial review, two doctrines antithetical to each other emerge — judicial deference, where the Court defers to the legislature on matters beyond its purported expertise, and manifest arbitrariness, where the Court outrightly declares legislative acts as unconstitutional to the principle of equality. The theoretical periphery of where the two doctrines apply or not has recently warranted an awkward answer. Their inherently vague nature is potent to confuse jurisprudence over when judicial review should be exercised or refrained from. In this paper, the authors contend that the application of these doctrines by Indian constitutional courts hasdefied consistency, where the diametrically opposite tests are being applied in similar factual matrices. This is demonstrated through the arising dichotomy among recent yet prominent case laws of the Supreme Court. This makes it imperative to harmonise the application of both doctrines to culminate in a consistent approach to conducting judicial review. The paper intends to resolve this conundrum byproposing a consistent theory of judicial review which would resolve the application of both doctrines. It builds on Dixon’s Responsive Judicial Review alongside other concomitant models to conclude that the present literature originates from a Global North constitutionalist perspective, requiring courts to conduct the exercise as a response to protecting democracy. However, given the nature of complexities faced by Global South constitutional democracies like India, resolving them requires the courts to not just be democratically responsive but also respond by protecting larger constitutional commitments as a whole. This can only occur by reimagining the contours of judicial review through the application of remedies. Thus, while judicial deference should be retained, it should give way to ensuring enforcement of constitutional values. This can be done by applying weak strong remedies in Indian constitutional matters, such that the balance between the two doctrines is maintained. One such remedy the paper proposes is a Suspended Finding of Unconstitutionality, which entails temporarily suspending the Court’sfinding of unconstitutionality of a legislative act until the legislature remedies such unconstitutionalitywithin a stipulated period.

Dr Yaniv Ben Harush’s review of the book titled “Act and Omission in Criminal Law: Autonomy, Morality, and Applications to Euthanasia” by Dr Roni Rosenberg provides a condensed yet enriching theoretical insight into the distinctions between an act and an omission, from a variety of perspectives. Dr Rosenberg contributes with their preferred perspective — the “Autonomy Rationale” — to distinguish between acts and omissions. This Autonomy Rationale is then applied to a motley of real-life scenarios, especially to the “issue of euthanasia”, to justify its adoption. We believe that this book review can offer a fresh mix of academic and practical deliberations for the Indian academic discourse on criminal laws to consider.

International Investment Law (‘IIL’) has long faced criticism for privileging the transnational capitalist class while restricting the regulatory autonomy of host States. International Investment Agreements (‘IIAs’), particularly through Investor-State Dispute Settlement (‘ISDS’) mechanisms, offer broad protections to investors but often impede States from enacting regulations in the public interest, including those aimed at upholding human rights. This structural imbalance, rooted in the neoliberal design of IIL, instrumentalises law to facilitate investment flows at the expense of human and social rights. Tribunal practice further reinforces this asymmetry, as illustrated in Glencore v. Bolivia, where Bolivia’s human rights-based defences were dismissed due to the narrow scope of the applicable Bilateral Investment Treaty (‘BIT’). Within this constrained regulatory space, human rights challenges like the exploitation of labour have emerged as urgent yet under-addressed concerns. As global supply chains expand and transnational corporations grow in influence, the current IIL framework seems to lack an effective mechanism to hold investors accountable. Recent reform efforts, such as those by UNCITRAL Working Group III, propose counterclaim mechanisms within ISDS, enabling host States to assert claims against investors for human rights violations. However, activating these counterclaims could be difficult due to narrowly worded dispute resolution clauses, questions of admissibility, and the absence of explicit investor obligations in most IIAs. This paper explores the structural faults within IIAs and the possibility of human rights counterclaims as a mechanism to address investor complicity in human rights violations. This paper, cognisant of the challenges existing within BITs in the Global South, proposes human rights counterclaims as a methodology toward ensuring the accountability of the transnational capitalist class. Focusing specifically on post-2008 South Asian IIAs, which increasingly include provisions affirming States’ regulatory autonomy, this research investigates whether these agreements allow counterclaims toward achieving investor accountability. Through doctrinal analysis of tribunal decisions and treaty language, this research assesses the possibility of deploying counterclaims to ensure investor accountability in the context of human rights.

In this Foreword, Professor Chimni highlights the lack of epistemic capacity within mainstream international law to respond to the rise of an illiberal global order, which is driven by imperialism and capitalism. In doing so, he emphasises the importance of subaltern perspectives and alternative epistemologies in critiquing capitalism, imperialism, militarism and the political economy of global conflict while relying on thinkers such as Rosa Luxemburg. The Foreword cautions against superficial forms of critique and calls for deeper engagement with structural issues of class and capitalism alongside race and gender. He ultimately urges critical scholars to use international law as a tool of resistance, reform and political imagination for oppressed peoples.

The NUJS Law Review was pleased to host Professor Balakrishnan Rajagopal for a conversation on July 2, 2025, as part of its Special Issue on Subaltern Perspectives and Alternative Epistemologies in International Law. Professor Rajagopal, currently serving as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing, reflected on his longstanding engagement with Third World Approaches to International Law (‘TWAIL’) and its relevance in understanding the relationship between international law, development, and power. The conversation examined how housing, land, and sovereignty serve as intersecting sites through which TWAIL interrogates both global and domestic structures of domination. Reflecting on bulldozer demolitions in India and the destruction of homes in Gaza, Professor Rajagopal illustrated how international law can function beyond institutional confines, as a tool of resistance, narrative, and political imagination. He warned against the appropriation of decolonial language by hegemonic actors and the erasure of internal colonialism in legal discourse. Situating these concerns within the broader crisis of the international legal order, he challenged the state-centric focus of mainstream legal thought and called for frameworks rooted in the lived experiences of affected communities. His reflections urged a reimagining of international law through post-developmental and movement-oriented approaches. The interview was conducted by Dr Vijay Kishore Tiwari, Special Advisor for the Special Issue, along with members of the NUJS Law Review Editorial Board. It was subsequently transcribed, edited, and finalised by the Board. The Review hopes that this dialogue offers a valuable contribution to ongoing conversations on the future of TWAIL, the legitimacy of international law, and the construction of counter-hegemonic frameworks of development and global justice.

Modernity and its allied secular science placed the adult, European, bourgeois, heterosexual male body as the normative standard against which they compared ‘other’ bodies. In the state of being and becoming, the other bodies were negatively construed as ‘deviant’ and ‘inferior’. Such constructions and hierarchisation of embodiments have been used by colonialism, capitalism, and patriarchy, formulating a common domain of consciousness to justify the subjugation of most of the world. Similarly, Imperial Feminism came up with its own normative formulation of womanhood that excluded several categories of women, such as non-Western and disabled women. In this way, international law and Imperial Feminism universalise powerful provincials while erasing the peripheral and thus rendering certain embodiments and their lived experiences illegible and untranslatable. Against this hegemonic normativity, TWAIL Feminism comes as an epistemic challenge that attempts to provincialise patriarchy and colonialism. While TWAIL as a movement and a discursive practice debunked the Eurocentric metanarratives of international law, it failed to address the question of patriarchy. TWAIL feminisms decentres Europe and simultaneously challenges patriarchy and the mainstay of liberal feminisms. The paper argues that the democratic episteme of TWAIL feminisms demands the inclusion of disfranchised women from the Global South within their epistemic fold, such as disabled women whose experiences remain foreign to the ontology of international law. It is incumbent upon TWAIL Feminism to ward off the exclusion of disabled feminist scholars who are often treated as marginal scholars within the discipline of legal philosophy. In this heuristic attempt, TWAIL Feminism must give space and voice to the marginal, disabled feminist voices by attempting to obviate epistemic and testimonial injustice against disabled women.

This essay offers some brief reflections, from a Third World Approaches to International Law (‘TWAIL’) vantage point, on the ways in which the global arms trade, symbolised by the ‘bullet’, is fundamentally embedded within the international legal regulation of war and peace. In mainstream international law, war is cast as a crisis and as a necessary response to threats to security; bringing about peace through the cessation of war is presented as the prime responsibility of the international community. This essay traces the influence of these two fundamentals of international law in relation to contemporary events, specifically in relation to the genocide in Palestine. In this arena, the ‘worth’ of war and peace is measured not in terms of protecting and supporting the already acutely dispossessed targets of the ‘bullet’, but in terms of protecting, supporting and systematically enriching those who produce and deploy it. A TWAIL analysis exposes the imperialist logic of those who benefit in different ways all along the collusive chains of arms-trade – chains that bind perpetrators to victims – and the role of the international legal order, including human rights, in ensuring that both remain entangled with one another in a corrosive carceral relationship. The essay concludes with ways to navigate this coercive and violent order both within and beyond international law and human rights.