Write: Public Interest Litigation and Judicial Activism. (1999)
Judicial activism is a disposition — a court extending its interpretive and remedial reach to shape what other organs must do. Public interest litigation (PIL) is a procedure — relaxed standing, letter petitions and court-led fact-finding. In India the two fused after the Emergency, so that PIL became the principal vehicle of activism; but they are not the same thing, and the gap between them is instructive.
PIL as the engine of activism
- It supplied the docket. Without relaxed standing (S. P. Gupta, 1981), the expanded Article 21 would have remained a doctrine available only to those who could afford appeals. PIL brought undertrials, bonded labourers and pavement dwellers to the Court.
- It changed the form of adjudication. Abram Chayes (“The Role of the Judge in Public Law Litigation”, 1976) described American structural suits that were sprawling and forward-looking; Indian PIL went further:
| Ordinary adjudication | PIL |
|---|---|
| Two identified parties | Diffuse class; petitioner often a stranger to the injury |
| Adversarial evidence | Commissioners, amici, affidavits |
| Past wrong, one-time decree | Prospective, continuing mandamus over years |
| Judge as umpire | Judge as manager and negotiator |
- It supplied legitimacy. S. P. Sathe, Judicial Activism in India (2002), argued that the post-Emergency Court earned authority by making the judicial process accessible and participatory, not merely by bold doctrine.
Activism without PIL
Activism predates PIL and works outside it. The property-era rulings (Golak Nath, 1967; bank nationalisation, 1970) were activism for the propertied. Kesavananda Bharati (1973) invented the basic structure limit in a land-reform challenge brought by the head of a Kerala math, not a PIL. The Second Judges Case (1993) rewrote the appointment process. Article 142 dissolves marriages on irretrievable breakdown (Shilpa Sailesh, 2023). The 2025 Governor’s-assent timelines arose from a State’s writ petition.
PIL without activism
Equally, PIL can end in restraint. In Narmada Bachao Andolan v. Union of India (2000) the Court let the dam proceed, deferring to executive judgment on development; BALCO Employees’ Union (2001) put economic policy beyond review; Balwant Singh Chaufal (2010) told courts to screen petitions and impose costs for oblique motives.
Evaluation
- For the partnership: PIL grounded activism in the claims of the voiceless, which is its best justification — the Court acting where no political remedy existed.
- Against: Lon Fuller‘s warning that adjudication cannot manage polycentric problems applies squarely to PIL on cities, forests and air. Anuj Bhuwania‘s Courting the People (2017) argues that the informality which made PIL accessible also made its activism unaccountable — no pleadings, no cross-examination, affected people unheard. In Almitra Patel (2000) a solid-waste petition produced a bench likening resettlement of slum dwellers to rewarding a pickpocket — the vehicle built for the poor turned against them.
Conclusion
PIL and judicial activism overlap without coinciding: PIL is the gateway, activism the use made of it. PIL is defensible as a means of access; activism, whether through PIL or not, is defensible only when it enforces a denied entitlement and leaves contestable policy to accountable institutions.