The NLS Forum curates pioneering research and current developments in the fields of law, public policy, social sciences and humanities.
Our work bridges academic scholarship, legal practice and
civil society discourse.
We present the University blog and five student journal blogs, where leading scholarship from around the world is edited by our faculty, researchers and students. To submit your work, please refer to the submission guidelines provided for each blog.
The Ideal Prisoner and The Limits of Reasonable Accommodation in Indian Prisons
July 10, 2026
This piece argues that allthough courts increasingly recognise the rights of prisoners with disabilities, those rights remain dependent on prison authorities for their practical implementation. The experiences of Dr. G. N. Saibaba and Father Stan Swamy show how disability accommodations are often framed as humanitarian exceptions rather than constitutional entitlements. Disability should be recognised through equality and solidarity, not sympathy or charity.
The Constitutional Cost of Blocking Platforms : Telegram Ban and how it Changes Digital Regulation in India
July 20, 2026
This piece analyses the larger implications of the six-day blocking of Telegram during the 2026 NEET-UG paper leak crisis. It argues that the Delhi High Court order upholding the ban, on the ground that Section 2(1)(v) of the IT Act extends to entire platforms, represents more than an expansion within the use of Section 69A of the IT Act, but it marks a departure from India's existing model of platform governance, which has relied on safe-harbour obligations rather than the outright disabling of intermediaries. Situating the judgment within the trajectory from Shreya Singhal to the two X Corp. cases, the piece argues that each step of this expansion has been judicially ratified without scrutiny of the requirements of necessity and the least restrictive means, leaving the Telegram order to outlast its own six-day timeline as a precedent for future platform-wide blocking.
India’s Anti-Avoidance Framework After Tiger Global: Why GAAR and JAAR Should not be Invoked Together
July 6, 2026
In Tiger Global, the Supreme Court permitted India's statutory GAAR and JAAR to operate in parallel to deny treaty benefits. This article argues that their simultaneous invocation is doctrinally unsound because it allows the Revenue to circumvent GAAR's procedural safeguards through the choice of forum. Drawing on comparative experience, it contends that even if JAAR survives, it must be confined to its traditional sham-only domain.
Reassessing Sovereignty in the age of Trade, Tech, and Climate Change
July 20, 2026
This article examines how sovereignty under International Economic Law is increasingly functional rather than absolute, shaped by overlapping regimes of trade, investment, and digital governance. Using the EU's pooled sovereignty model, WTO non-discrimination principles, and the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism as illustrations, it argues that IEL simultaneously enables cooperation and imposes asymmetric constraints on domestic policymaking, disproportionately burdening developing economies. Digital sovereignty debates further expose the fragmentation of global regulatory coordination. The article concludes that sovereignty should be reconceived as layered and negotiated authority within multilevel governance, calling for IEL reform centered on doctrinal clarity, institutional flexibility, and distributive equity.