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TENTATIVE CHAPTERIZATION

INTRODUCTION TO UPENDRA BAXI


Upendra Baxi (born 9 November 1938)1 is a legal scholar, since 1996 professor
of law in development at the University of Warwick, United Kingdom. He has
been the vice-chancellor of University of Delhi (19901994), prior to which he
held the position of professor of law at the same university for 23 years (1973
1996). He has also served as the vice-chancellor of the University of South
Gujarat, Surat, India (19821985).

In 2011, he was awarded the Padma Shri, the fourth highest civilian award in
India, by the Government of India.2

Baxi earned LL.B. from Rajkot (South Gujarat) University. He holds LL.M.
degrees from the University of Bombay and the University of California,
Berkeley. Additionally, he holds a degree of Doctorate of Juristic Sciences
(S.J.D.), also from the University of California, Berkeley

He taught law at Faculty of Law, University of Delhi, where he


remained dean 19751978 and vice-chancellor of the university.3

He has taught various courses at Universities of Sydney, Duke University,


the American University, the New York University Law School Global Law
Program, and the University of Toronto.

He was a former Ford Foundation Professor of Human Rights at The West


Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences in Kolkata, and was succeeded
by Justice Ruma Pal. He has also served as the honorary director (research) at
the Indian Law Institute (19851988) and the president of the Indian Society of
International Law (19921995).

Baxi's areas of special expertise in teaching and research include comparative


constitutionalism, social theory of human rights, human rights responsibilities in
corporate governance and business conduct, and materiality of globalisation.

1
de Droit International de la Ha Staff, A. (2002). Recueil Des Cours: Collected Courses: Index Tomes/. Martinus
Nijhoff. p. 273. ISBN 9789041116123. Retrieved 30 August 2015.
2
"Padma Awards Announced" (Press release). Ministry of Home Affairs. 25 January 2011. Retrieved 6
June 2013.
3
Padma Vibhushan for Montek Ahluwalia, Azim Premji ET Bureau". Economic Times. 26 January 2011.
Retrieved 6 June 2013

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Professor Baxis writings have been cited by Indian High Courts and the Indian
Supreme Court as well as by appellate justices in South Asia. In one instance,
the International Court of Justice cited his work as persuasive authority
concerning state succession to treaties. Professor Baxi has been awarded
Honorary Doctorates in Law by the National Law School University of India,
Bangalore and the University of La Trobe, Melbourne. The Indian Lawyers
Association recently honoured him with a lifetime achievement award, along
with Justice Krishna Iyer. Two festschrifts (books of essays in his honour) have
been recently published, and several books have been dedicated to him.
Professor William Twining has recently dealt extensively with Baxis thoughts
and texts (along with those of Francis Deng, Yash Ghai, and Abdullahi-An-
Naim) in a book entitled Human Rights: Southern Voices (Cambridge, 2009.)
For his contribution to legal and political affairs, he was awarded the third
highest civic Honor a Padmashriby the President of India in 2011.4
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.)

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http://www.arts.mq.edu.au/

2
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); Mambrinos 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.

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HIS PUBLICATIONS
SCHOLARLY ARTICLES

He has wrote so many articles on different issues. His articles are scholarly in
nature. Some of his articles are as follows:

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.

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(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 ali, 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 Iyers 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

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(eds) Responsibility in World Business: Managing Harmful Side-effects of
Corporate Activity (Tokyo: The United Nations University Press) pp 175-201.

(2004) An Honest Citizens 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.

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(2002) The (Im) possibility of Constitutional Justice: Seismographic Notes
on Indian Constitutionalism in Sridharan, E et al. (eds)Indias 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.

BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO HIS ONE OF THE ARTICLE:-

"Voices of Suffering and the Future of Human Rights,

Baxi begins his book with the following sentence: This book seeks to decipher
the future of protean forms of social action assembled, by convention, under a
portal named human rights. It problematizes the very notion of human rights,
the standard narratives of their origins, the ensemble of ideologies animating
their modes of production, and the wayward circumstances of their
enunciation.(v)

Lets try to understand the article chapter vise.

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In the first chapter, Baxi is at pains to illustrate the different ways in which
human rights are used and understood throughout the world. For Baxi, it is
axiomatic that the historic mission of contemporary human rights is to give
voice to human suffering, to make it visible, and to ameliorate it.5

The second chapter begins with the argument against the claim that human
rights originated with the European Enlightenment, or that they are in any way
the gift of the West to the rest. Baxi is very eloquent in his denial of this
proposition, and comes up with a number of powerful arguments as to why it
should be rejected. The main theme introduced by chapter two, however, is the
distinction between modern and contemporary notions of human rights. The
last important distinction introduced in this chapter is that between politics of
human rights and politics for human rights.6

The next two chapters are largely concerned with setting the scene within which
Baxi sees contemporary human rights as functioning.

Baxi then goes on to suggest that the notion of universality as it applies to


human rights is best understood in terms of the Hegelian dialectical method, in
particular the synthesis of abstract universality and abstract particularity in
bringing about concrete universalit.

BOOKS:-
Some important books of him:-

Human Rights in a Posthuman World : Critical Essays. Oxford


University Press (India), 2007.

The Future of Human Rights. Oxford University Press, 2002.

Mambrino's Helmet?: Human Rights for a Changing World (Co-written


with B Upendra). Har-Anand Publications, 1994.

The Rights of Subordinated Peoples (Co-written with O. Mendelsohn).


Oxford University Press, 1994.

Inhuman Wrongs and Human Rights: Unconventional Essays. New


Delhi: Haranand Publications, 1994.

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Review of Upendra Baxis The Future of Human Rights By Euan MacDonald*
6
Review of Upendra Baxis The Future of Human Rights By Euan MacDonald*

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Towards a Sociology of Indian Law. Satvahan, 1986.

Inconvenient Forum and Convenient Catastrophe: The Bhopal Case.


Bombay: NM Tripathi, 1986.

Mass Disasters and Multinational Liability: The Bhopal Case (Co-


written with T. Paul). NM Tripathi

The Crisis of the Indian Legal System. Vikas Publishers, 1982.

The Indian Supreme Court and Politics. Eastern Book Co., 1980.

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SUMMARY OF BOOK-THE FUTURE OF HUMAN RIGHT:-
Summar of The Future of Human Rights

This book critically examines the contemporary discourses on the nature


of 'human rights', their histories, the myths that are embedded in them,
and contributes an alternative reading of those histories by placing the
concerns and interests of the 'people in struggle and communities of
resistance' at centre stage. The work analyses the significance of the UN
and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and goes on to study the
more contemporary issues such as women's struggle to feminize the
understanding and practice of human rights, the post-modernist critique
of the universal idiom of human rights and, most pertinently for the
current world scene, it analyzes the impact of globalization on the human
rights movement. The volume includes a discussion on the proposed
United Nations norms regarding the human rights responsibilities of
multinational corporations and other business entities.

This edition further addresses the diversity in labouring practices that


relate to making, remaking, and unmaking of internationally agreed upon
human rights norms and standards.

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REVIEW OF BOOK-THE FUTURE OF HUMAN RIGHT-
This book is pitch in the main at the international human right scholar, it
will contain something capable of stimulating-and frustrating- even the
most jaded reader. For a short book just over 150 pages-it brims with
ideas. Its range is also rather grand: the work contains chapters on the
genealogy of human rights, relativism and rights, and the impact on
human rights culture of the dynamics of globalism. While providing an
account of some of the main steams of argument contained within it, this
review will select just a handful of choice cuts from the book in order to
give a flavour of the work as a whole.

While the Title of the book might suggest a work of divination, The
Future of Human Rights in fact constitutes a (Lighly individual) stocking
of Pact developments and a sustained analysis of contemporary ones.
This is not intended as a criticism. For one thing, taking stock of the
present is hard enough a task given Baxis subject-matter. For another,
works of futurology tend gradually to disappoint, resulting more often
than not in uncompelling utopian or dystopian fantasies. The few
predictions that do occur in Baxis work are often no more than throw-
away last paragraphs to chapters. The authors complicated, redical
pluralism means that such predictions tend to oscillate widly, and at the
same time, between often polarised scenarios. An example of this sort of
hedge- betting occurs at the end of a discussion of contemporary human
rights practice- and the world of the NGOs-in chapter 3, Baxi argues,
almost in the same breath, that the diversity of contemporary human right
practice has the potential both to satisfy of Children, and to leave almost
wholly intact the structures of global uppression for Midnight s Children
everywhere in the fourth world. The chapter closer with a pious wish: As
and when future practices of human right resistance and solidarity build
bridges of communicative hope between the two (worlds), the future of
human rights may well be born, some way find this type of conclusion, as
more generally the almost playful method of argument that underlies it,
trying. About, at all times, it retains the capacity to provoke and
stimulate.

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CONCLUSION:-
Upendra Baxis essays "are the grains of salt which will rather give an
appetite than offend with society. His essays cover a huge range of
subjects and the writing style is quite varied. Some are philosophical,
some are witty, some are deep, some are humorous. Upendra Baxis aim
as an essayist was to share the wisdom of his life. His style of essay
writing is not dogmatic nor didactic but rather personable and friendly.
His style allows him to explore such subjects with an observational eye
that relates incidents to meaning and only eventually reveals his judgment
and wisdom on the subject. His essays were well received because of his
warm wisdom. He was very skeptical. And no doubt he was an
empiricist. His way of thinking was inductive. It was based upon facts
and upon data. His spirit of inquiry and spirit of skepticism was the
outcome of Renaissance.

Upendra Baxis essays are the art of success among men. He comes out
as a moralist, the statesman and the man of the world and his Essays are
the treasures of wisdom arising from the universal insight into the affairs
of the world. There is a blend of deep wisdom and practical shrewdness
with satire and meditative eloquence. Bacon expresses his views in the
form of antithesis. It is the outcome of his mental habit fastened by his
practice in the courts. His essays remain force compendium of practical
philosophy. There is found wit, keen observation, graver or clever
mundane judgments.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY:-
WEBSITES:-

www.recht-als-kultur.de.

https://www2.warwick.ac.uk.

www.law.ed.ac.uk.

https//en.wikipedia.org.

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