Menaka Guruswamy

Dr. Menaka Guruswamy (born November 27, 1974) is a Senior Advocate at the Supreme Court of India. She is a B.R. Ambedkar Research Scholar and Lecturer at Columbia Law School, New York. Guruswamy has been visiting faculty at Yale Law School, New York University School of Law and University of Toronto School of Law. She is known for having played a significant role in many landmark cases before the Supreme Court, including the Section 377 case, the bureaucratic reforms case, the Augusta Westland bribery case, the Salwa Judum case, Right to Education case among others. She is assisting the Supreme Court as Amicus Curie in the case pertaining to the alleged extrajudicial killings of 1528 persons in Manipur.

Guruswamy has advised the United Nations Development Fund, New York and United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), New York and UNICEF South Sudan on various aspects of International Human Rights Law and has also supported the constitution-making process in Nepal.

Early life and education

Guruswamy is the daughter of Mr. Mohan Guruswamy, a former advisor to the Ministry of Finance, Government of India and Ms.Meera Guruswamy.

Guruswamy has advanced degrees in law from the University of Oxford, Harvard Law School and the National Law School of India University. Her primary education was  Hyderabad Public School, after which she finished High School at Sardar Patel Vidyalaya, New Delhi. This was followed by B.A.LL.B. (Hons) from National Law School of India University, Bangalore (1997). Subsequently, she was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to read for the BCL at the University of Oxford (2000) and the Gammon Fellowship to pursue the LL.M at Harvard Law School (2001). She obtained her D.Phil from the University of Oxford in 2015 with a thesis on ‘Constitutionalism in India, Pakistan and Nepal’.

In the year 2019, in an interview with CNN Fareed Zakaria, Guruswamy revealed that she was in a relationship with lawyer Arundhati Katju, with whom she convinced the Supreme Court in 2018 to decriminalise Section 377. She said that the two were indeed a couple and that the victory was not just a professional benchmark but also a personal win.

Career

Guruswamy joined the bar in 1997 and started working with the then Attorney General of India, Ashok Desai. After completing her BCL at Oxford (2000) and LL.M. at Harvard (2001), she practiced law at Davis Polk & Wardwell, New York, as an Associate.

Her practice at the Supreme Court of India covers areas of White Collar Defense, Constitutional Law, Corporate Law and Arbitration. She has represented the Union of India and National Capital Territory of Delhi in various matters.

Decriminalization of Homosexuality

In April 2016, Guruswamy along with a team of lawyers including Arundhati Katju and Saurabh Kripal filed a petition on behalf of five LGBT petitioners led by Navtej Singh Johar challenging the constitutionality of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860. The petition was the first instance that LGBT Indians actually filed writ petitions alleging violation of their fundamental rights. Guruswamy also appeared on behalf of petitioners from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi and in the landmark judgment, the 5-judge Constitutional bench of the Supreme Court read down Section 377 as not applicable to consenting adults.

She had also appeared for Shyam Benegal the film maker in the Supreme Court in the case of Suresh Kumar Koushal v. Naz Foundation (2013).

Bureaucratic Reforms Case

In the case of T.S.R. Subramanium & Others v. Union of India, Guruswamy represented former cabinet secretary T.S.R. Subramanian and 80 other retired high ranking bureaucrats to seek the implementation of various bureaucratic reforms. In a significant decision, the Supreme Court held, inter alia, that bureaucrats are not bound to follow oral orders from Government officials and must rely on written orders, that a Civil Services Board consisting of senior bureaucrats must be formed at the Centre and State level to look into matters of postings and transfers.

Right to Education Case

Guruswamy represented an intervenor, the Azim Premji Foundation, in the case of Society for Unaided Private Schools of Rajasthan v. Union of India pertaining to the constitutionality of Section 12(1)(c) of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009. Section 12(1)(c) mandated private unaided schools to admit 25% of their Class strength with children from weaker and disadvantaged sections and provide them with free education. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Constitutionality of the provision.

Salwa Judum Case

Guruswamy was a part of the team of lawyers that successfully litigated against Salwa Judum in the landmark case of Nandini Sundar v. State of Chattisgarh [(2011) 7 SCC 547]. Salwa Judam was the practice of deploying tribal youths as Special Police Officers in the fight against the Maoist insurgency and ordered their immediate disarming.

August Westland VVIP Chopper Scam

In the Augusta Westland corruption case, wherein middlemen and Indian officials received kickbacks in a deal to purchase helicopters, Guruswamy represented former Air Chief Marshal S.P. Tyagi before a Special CBI Court. She successfully argued for his bail after his arrest. In 2018, a charge sheet was filed against Tyagi and the case is currently pending.

Amicus Curiae

In 2012, a bench of Justice Aftab Alam and Justice Ranjana Desai appointed Guruswamy as the Amicus Curie in the case of alleged 1528 extrajudicial killings by the armed forces in Manipur, India. Among other contributions, Guruswamy proposed to the bench that a Special Investigation Team be set up to investigate the killings of persons. In 2016, accepting the submissions of the Amicus and the Petitioners, the Supreme Court ordered that the use of excessive force by Police or the Armed Forces must be thoroughly enquired into. The Court held that there is no concept of absolute immunity from trial by the criminal court constituted under the Cr.P.C., even if the offence is alleged to have been committed by army personnel. In 2017, the Court directed the CBI to constitute a Special Investigation Team to complete investigations in the matter, lodge FIRs in the matter and file chargesheets wherever necessary. The case is ongoing in the Supreme Court.

Senior Advocate

On March 29, 2019, Guruswamy was designated Senior Advocate by the Supreme Court of India. The designation is conferred on merit to exceptional lawyers by the Supreme Court of India or of High Courts in the States. The designation is conferred by a permanent committee consisting of the Chief Justice of India as its Chairperson, along with two-senior-most Supreme Court judges, Attorney general for India, and a member of the Bar as nominated by the Chairperson and other members. Each application is then sent to the all the justices of the Supreme Court who consider the list of advocates who have applied and review the marks allotted.

Academic career

Guruswamy is the B.R. Ambedkar Research Scholar and Lecturer at Columbia Law School, New York. She has also been visiting faculty at Yale Law School, University of Toronto School of Law and New York University School of Law. She has taught courses on South Asian Constitutionalism, Comparative Constitutional Law, Constitutional Design in Post-Conflict Democracies and others.   

Honors and awards

Guruswamy is the first Indian and second woman to have her portrait hung at the Milner Hall in Rhodes House at the University of Oxford. In January 2019, her name featured in Foreign Policy's 100 Global Thinkers List, along with other prominent personalities such as Michelle Obama, Kofi Annan and Jeff Bezos. On International Women's Day in March 2019, Guruswamy was honored by Harvard Law School as Women Inspiring Change in a portrait exhibition. In April 2019, her name featured in Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People, along with other prominent personalities such as Arundhati Katju, Xi Jinping, Nancy Pelosi and Hasan Minaj. She has also been featured in Forbes India's List of Women-Power Trailblazer, 2019.

Publications

Guruswamy has co-edited Founding Moments in Constitutionalism to be published on October 19, 2019, by Hart/Bloomsbury Publications, UK. Her most recent publications include essays on Constitution-Making in South Asia, in Handbook on Comparative Constitutional Law (Edward Elgar, Forthcoming (2019), short piece on the Aadhar decision in the American Journal of International Law (2018) and ‘Crafting Constitutional Values: An Essay on the Supreme Court of India’, (An Inquiry into the Existence Of Global Values, Hart Publishing/Bloomsbury (2015).

Guruswamy writes widely for print and online publications such as the New York Times, the Indian Express, Scroll.in and the Hindu.

Year	Title of Editorial	Newspaper / Publisher
2018	Brutalisation of Kathua girl is a terrifying moment for Indian nation	Indian Express
2018	Towards a truer freedom apropos Constitution of India	Mint
2018	Section 377: SC has distinguished itself as an institution invested in protection of all Indians	Hindustan Times
2017	India's Supreme Court Expands Freedom	New York Times
2017	Triple Talaq before the Indian Supreme Court	Verfassungsblog
2017	How can Rhodes scholars reconcile themselves to the moral challenge posed by Rhodes's politics?	Scroll.in
2017	Right to privacy: Will India be the country of its Constitution or a society of its subjects?	Scroll.in
2017	On triple talaq, Supreme Court must uphold Constitutional values, not religious ones	Scroll.in
2017	Why is illiberalism on the rise in the great democracies of India, Germany and US?	Scroll.in
2016	Why the Indian army needs to abandon the colonial concept of 'martial races'	Scroll.in
2016	Why India must end its official amnesia about the horrors of Partition	Scroll.in
2015	The lesser citizenship of Indian wives	Tehelka
2014	In wake of Peshawar, India must resist demands to step towards the darkness of dogma	Scroll.in
2013	Making criminals of us all	Indian Express
2011	Defending dissent and democracy	The Hindu
2008	Nepal's challenging journey to a new Constitution	Mint
2008	Financing terror: the Lashkar and beyond	The Hindu