rely wholly on Dicey's exposition of the rule of law but ever since the second World War the rule has come to acquire a positive content in all democratic countries.** The International Commission of Jurists, which has a consultative status under the United Nations, held its Congress in Delhi in 1959 where lawyers, judges and law teachers representing fifty-three countries affirmed that the rule of law is a dynamic concept which should be employed to safeguard and advance the political and civil rights of the individual in a free society. One of the committees of that Congress emphasised that no law should subject any individual to discriminatory treatment. These principles must vary from country to country depending upon the provisions of its Constitution and indeed upon whether there exists a written Constitution. As it has been said in a lighter vein to show the supremacy of the Parliament, the charm of the English Constitution is that “it does not exist”. Our Constitution exists and must continue to exist. It guarantees equality before law and the equal protection of laws to every one. The dential of such equality, as modified by the judicially evolved theory of classification, is the very negation of rule of law. 683. The argument directed at showing the invalidation of the 39th Amendment on the ground that it abrogates the principle of ‘Separation of Powers’ is replete with many possibilities since it has several sidelights. But I will be brief since I have already held that clauses (4) and (5) of Article 329-A are unconstitutional. I cannot regard the point as unnecessary for my determination since the point seems to me of great constitutional importance. 684. The Indian Constitution was enacted by the constituent Assembly in the backdrop of the National struggle for Independence. The Indian people had gone through a travail and on the attainment of Independence, the country had to face unique problems which had not confronted other federations like America, Australia, Candada or Switzerland. These problems had to be solved pragmatically and not by confining the country's political structure within the straitjacket of a known or established formula. The Constituent Assembly, therefore, pursued the policy of pick and choose to see what suited the genius of the Nation best. “This process produced new modifications of established ideas about the construction of federal governments and their relations with the governments of their constituent units. The Assembly, in fact, produced a new kind of federalism to meet India's peculiar needs.”* While introducing the Draft Constitution in the Constituent Assembly, Dr. Ambedkar who was one of the chief architects of the Constitution said that our Constitution avoided the tight mould of federalism in which the American Constitution was caught and could be “both unitary as well as federal according to the requirements of time and circumstances”. We have what may perhaps be described by the phrase. ‘cooperative federalism’, a concept different from the one in vogue when the federations of United States or of Australia were set up. 685. The American Constitution provides for a rigid separation of governmental powers into three basic divisions–the executive, legislative and judicial. It is an essential principle of that Constitution that powers entrusted to one department should not be exercised by any other department. The

Select target paragraph3

Connect to a paragraph
Connect to an entity
Disable highlights
Add to table of contents