Enforcing Rights against the State in India

Abstract

Chapter 4 deals with the issue of lack of access to justice and attempts to find reasons for the inaccessibility of the higher judiciary. While it appears to be clear to observers that the Supreme Court and high courts are not accessible enough, surprisingly, there are actually no empirical studies that examine why this is the case. Some factors can, however, be deduced from a study dealing with the inaccessibility of district courts, that is, the lower judiciary.The fourth chapter also shows that the institution of Public Interest Litigation, for various reasons, cannot compensate for lack of access to justice, and that the state is not properly implementing (or not at all exploring) many other possible alternative mechanisms.