UNIFORM CIVIL CODE

The Chief Justice of the Indian Supreme Court endorsed a common civil code on Tuesday. Read the BBC article here (Chris alerted me to the story; thanks!) The Hindustan Times has this report, and notes that the decision in which the Court expressed its views concerned statutory restrictions (from 1925) on Christian charitable donations, which the Court struck down as an unconstitutional infringement of equality rights.

Disputes over the uniform civil code are likely to make U.S. Free Exercise disputes look like a "graduate seminar in political philosophy" (to quote one of my favorite political theorists, Sheldon Wolin, from his 1994 Political Theory review of John Rawls's Political Liberalism). Read the New India Press story here, which gives an overview of some of the controversies surrounding a uniform civil code, including touchy issues of family law that go to the heart of issues of communty identity, multiculturalism, secularism, and the exercise of private power. New India Press has also got an article on the Court's decision here. For some background on one of the most significant recent cases in Indian Supreme Court history dealing with family law, the Shah Bano case, see this Indian Express article, and this case study from Professor Laura Dudley Jenkins at the University of Cincinnati.