TY - BOOK ID - 133407874 TI - Public Interest Litigation in India : Overreaching Or Underachieving ? PY - 2009 PB - Washington, D.C., The World Bank, DB - UniCat KW - Access to justice KW - Administration of justice KW - Case law KW - Civil law KW - Corruption KW - Court KW - Courts KW - Criminal KW - Fundamental right KW - Fundamental rights KW - Gender KW - Gender and Law KW - Human Rights KW - Human rights KW - Inequality KW - Information Security and Privacy KW - Judges KW - Justices KW - Law and Development KW - Law Enforcement Systems KW - Laws KW - Legal Institutions of the Market Economy KW - Prisoners KW - Rule of law KW - Sexual harassment KW - Social Development KW - Social justice KW - Will UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:133407874 AB - Public interest litigation has historically been an innovative judicial procedure for enhancing the social and economic rights of disadvantaged and marginalized groups in India. In recent years, however, a number of criticisms of public interest litigation have emerged, including concerns related to separation of powers, judicial capacity, and inequality. These criticisms have tended to abstraction, and the sheer number of cases has complicated empirical assessments. This paper finds that public interest litigation cases constitute less than 1 percent of the overall case load. The paper argues that complaints related to concerns having to do with separation of powers are better understood as criticisms of the impact of judicial interventions on sector governance. On the issue of inequality, the analysis finds that win rates for fundamental rights claims are significantly higher when the claimant is from an advantaged social group than when he or she is from a marginalized group, which constitutes a social reversal, both from the original objective of public interest litigation and from the relative win rates in the 1980s. ER -