3 days ago
India's legal system avoids sweeping lower court injunctions recently curtailed by US Supreme Court
Written by Swapnil Tripathi
President Donald Trump's second term has seen a surge in executive orders, including the withdrawal of diversity and inclusion mandates and a recent order seeking to deny birthright citizenship to children born in the United States to undocumented immigrants or temporary visa holders. To date, he has signed 164 executive orders.
Several of these orders have been subject to legal challenge, with federal district courts granting interim relief in the form of nationwide stays on their implementation. Last week, the US Supreme Court ruled on this practice in Trump vs CASA, holding that lower federal courts cannot grant universal stays prohibiting the enforcement of executive orders and must confine relief to the parties before them. This development raises an important question: Could a district court in India exercise similar powers?
The US Constitution establishes a federal structure where powers are divided between the federal and state governments, each with its own constitution, legislature, executive, and judiciary. Disputes arising from federal executive action or legislation are adjudicated in the federal courts. These courts follow a three-tier hierarchy: District courts, courts of appeals, and the US Supreme Court. District courts, at the base of this structure, have the authority to review executive actions for their conformity with the Constitution and federal law. They can grant interim injunctions, including nationwide stays, and may ultimately strike down the action as unconstitutional.
In contrast, India's constitutional architecture provides for a single, unified judiciary. While India adopts a quasi-federal model with a division of powers between the Union and the states, the judiciary remains integrated. It comprises district courts, high courts, and the Supreme Court, functioning within a hierarchical framework. Unlike their American counterparts, Indian district courts are confined to civil and criminal matters under statutory law and lack the authority to entertain constitutional challenges to executive action or legislation.
This power lies exclusively with the Supreme Court and the high courts. Under Articles 32 and 226, respectively, both courts can directly hear petitions for the enforcement of fundamental rights and issue writs or interim orders, including staying or striking down executive and legislative action. Although high courts have fixed territorial jurisdiction, they can entertain challenges to the central government's actions if the cause of action arises within their territory. This ensures that litigants need not approach the Supreme Court in the first instance for relief against Union's action.
Since the adoption of the Constitution, high courts have often acted as first responders in constitutional litigation. Within the first year itself, laws abolishing the zamindari system were challenged before multiple High Courts, with the Patna High Court striking down the Bihar Land Reforms Act, 1950. Similarly, in Tara Singh vs State, the Punjab High Court struck down Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code — the erstwhile sedition provision — as violative of the right to freedom of speech.
The importance of empowering both the high courts and the Supreme Court to review executive action became particularly evident during the Emergency (1975–77). When the President suspended the right to approach courts for enforcing key fundamental rights, including the right to life, thousands were detained. Despite this suspension, nine high courts entertained habeas corpus petitions and held them maintainable where detention orders were contrary to law or vitiated by mala fides. Although these decisions were later overruled by the Supreme Court in the infamous ADM Jabalpur case, the episode highlights the value of concurrent constitutional forums.
The availability of multiple judicial avenues meant that, even when the Supreme Court ruled against the detainees, the high courts had, at least for a time, provided a measure of protection. This capacity for different forums to reach different conclusions highlights why constitutional powers were vested in both levels: To ensure multiple judicial voices and, in moments of institutional failure, offer alternative avenues for relief.
Unlike their American counterparts, Indian courts are generally reluctant to stay the operation of legislation or executive action. In Bhavesh Parish vs Union of India (2000), the Supreme Court held that courts must exercise judicial restraint and intervene only where the provisions are 'manifestly unjust or glaringly unconstitutional'. This high threshold reflects the presumption in favour of the constitutionality of legislation. Among recent challenges, the Court has declined to stay the operation of the Citizenship Amendment Act and its rules, the law governing the appointment of Election Commissioners, and the Waqf (Amendment) Act.
However, this institutional design creates the possibility of conflicting decisions across high courts. It is common for a central government action to be challenged simultaneously before multiple High Courts, resulting in inconsistent rulings — one court staying or striking down the action, while another upholds it. A contemporary example is the challenge to the Information Technology Rules, 2021, governing online intermediaries, where some courts granted stay orders while others declined to do so.
In such situations, parties often approach the Supreme Court, which typically adopts one of two approaches: First, transferring all proceedings to a single high court to ensure uniformity, as it did in the challenges to the IT Rules by designating the Delhi High Court as the exclusive forum; or second, transferring the proceedings to itself, as seen in the petitions seeking legal recognition for same-sex marriage.
India's system, by design, avoids the kind of sweeping trial-court-level injunctions recently curtailed by the US Supreme Court. By reserving these powers to the constitutional courts, it maintains a clear appellate structure and prevents conflicting orders from subordinate forums. At the same time, by empowering both the high courts and the Supreme Court, it preserves multiple avenues for citizens to challenge government action, even if that occasionally results in divergent rulings across high courts.
The writer is a lawyer currently pursuing a DPhil in law at the University of Oxford
