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About
Tarun Khaitan is the Professor (Chair) of Public Law at the LSE Law School and an Honorary Professorial Fellow at Melbourne Law School. Previously, he has been the Head of Research at the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights (Oxford), the Professor of Public Law and Legal Theory (Oxford), Vice Dean (Faculty of Law, Oxford), and a Visiting Professor of Law (Chicago, Harvard, and NYU law schools).
He completed his undergraduate studies (BA LLB Hons) at the National Law School (Bangalore) in 2004 as the 'Best All-Round Graduating Student'. He then came to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and completed his postgraduate studies at Exeter College. His research has been cited in over a dozen cases by influential courts, including the Indian Supreme Court, the Canadian Supreme Court, the European Court of Human Rights, the Israeli Supreme Court, the Pakistani Supreme Court, the Madras High Court, the High Court of Kerala, the Superior Court of Quebec, the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia, and in the Opinion of the Advocate General before the European Court of Justice (a list of these cases is available here). His research has also been cited in the Indian Parliament.
Research
Research Interests
His primary research interests are comparative public law, legal theory, discrimination law. He is currently working on a monograph on constitutional design.
Publications
Prof Khaitan’s monograph entitled A Theory of Discrimination Law (OUP 2015 hbk, South Asia edition and Oxford Scholarship Online, 2016 pbk) was reviewed very positively in leading journals, including in Law and Philosophy, where Sophia Moreau said "In this magnificent and wide-ranging book ... Khaitan attempts what very few others have tried." In Ethics, Deborah Hellman said that its 'ambitious scope and the careful argumentation it contains make it one of the best in the field’. In his review in the Modern Law Review, Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen claimed that "Khaitan's account is sophisticated, extensive and among the best normative accounts of discrimination law available." Colm O'Cinneide's review in the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies says that "Khaitan’s quest shows up the inadequacies of previous attempts to track down this Holy Grail, and the path he has laid down will encourage others to follow in his footsteps." The book won the Woodward Medal (with a cash prize of 10,000 Australian dollars) in 2019 for making ‘a significant contribution to knowledge in a field of humanities and social sciences.’ Links to reviews of the book are available here.
He co-edited Foundations of Indirect Discrimination Law (Bloomsbury, 2018) with Prof Hugh Collins, and contributed two co-authored chapters to the volume. This collection was the outcome of a major international workshop with leading discrimination law scholars to rethink the moral foundations of the legal prohibition of indirect discrimination in the face of growing judicial hostility towards it. Chapters from the volume have been cited by the Canadian Supreme Court, the Indian Supreme Court, the Court of Appeal for Ontario, the Madras High Court, the Superior Court of Quebec, and the Kerala High Court.
Constitutional Resilience in South Asia (co-edited with Ms Swati Jhaveri & Dr Dinesha Samararatne, Bloomsbury, 2023) was the outcome of a workshop on South Asian public law organised by Prof Khaitan at Melbourne Law School in 2019. The contributions consider the design and functioning of an array of institutions and actors, including political parties, legislatures, the political executive, the bureaucracy, courts, fourth branch / guarantor institutions (such as electoral commissions), the people, and the military to examine their roles in strengthening or undermining constitutional democracy across South Asia. Each chapter offers a contextual and jurisdictionally-tethered account of the causes behind the erosion of constitutional democracy, and some examine the resilience of constitutional institutions against democratic erosion.
The Entrenchment of Democracy: The Comparative Constitutional Design of Elections, Parties and Voting (co-edited with Profs Tom Ginsburg & Aziz Huq, Cambridge University Press, 2024) was the outcome of a workshop at Chicago Law School in 2022. This volume of essays, available open access, brings together a group of leading political scientists, legal scholars, and political theorists to describe and analyse the body of constitutional law and practice within and upon democratic institutions, in particular examining how constitutional law shapes party systems and electoral democracy.
Hum Bharat Ke Log (We the People of India—co-authored with Surbhi Karwa, Vani Prakashan, forthcoming 2025) is a monograph in Hindi, exploring various facets of constitutionalism in India.
- ‘Aversive Constitutionalism’ in Catherine O’Regan, Sujit Choudhry, and Carlos Bernal eds., Research Handbook on Constitutional Interpretation (Elgar 2025)
- ‘Guarantor (or ‘Fourth Branch’) Institutions’ in Jeff King and Richard Bellamy eds, Cambridge Handbook of Constitutional Theory (CUP 2025) 603-621
- ‘Introduction’ (co-authored with Tom Ginsburg & Aziz Huq) in The Entrenchment of Democracy: The Comparative Constitutional Design of Elections, Parties and Voting (co-edited with Tom Ginsburg & Aziz Huq, CUP 2024) 1-25
- ‘Political Parties in Constitutional Theory’ in The Entrenchment of Democracy: The Comparative Constitutional Design of Elections, Parties and Voting (co-edited with Tom Ginsburg & Aziz Huq, CUP 2024) 63-99
- ‘Constitutional Directives and the Duty to Govern Well’ in Vicki Jackson and Yasmin Dawood eds., Constitutionalism and the Right to Effective Government (CUP 2023) 193-205
- ‘The Point of Discrimination Law’ in Martha Nussbaum et al eds., The Empire of Disgust (OUP 2018) 348–368
- Cited by the Canadian Supreme Court in Fraser v Canada 2020 SCC 28
- Cited by the Indian Supreme Court in Nitisha v India 2021 (the introductory chapter co-authored by me was cited)
- Cited by the Canadian Supreme Court in Fraser v Canada 2020 SCC 28
- ‘Discrimination’ in Max Planck Encyclopedia of Comparative Constitutional Law (Max Planck Foundation for International Peace and Rule of Law 2017)
- Cited by the CJEU Advocate General in Instituto Nacional de la Seguridad Social (Case C‑625/20)
- Cited by the Supreme Court of India in Tamil Nadu v National South Indian Rivers Interlinking Agriculturalist Association (2021)
- ‘The Architecture of Discrimination Law’ in Vidhu Verma ed, Unequal Worlds (OUP 2015) 119–163
- ‘Prelude to a Theory of Discrimination Law’ in Deborah Hellman & Sophia Moreau eds, Philosophical Foundations of Discrimination Law (OUP 2013) 138–162
A full list of Prof Khaitan’s publications is available here.
Peer Reviewed Articles
- ‘Rewriting State of West Bengal v Anwar Ali Sarkar: The Possibility of an Anti-Colonial Jurisprudence’ (2023) 56 VRU|World Comparative Law 17-32
- ‘Areas of Law: Three Questions in Special Jurisprudence’ (co-authored with Prof Sandy Steel, 2023) 43 Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 76-96
- ‘Theorizing Areas of Law: A Taxonomy of Special Jurisprudence’ (co-authored with Prof Sandy Steel, 2022) 28 Legal Theory 325-351
- ‘Guarantor Institutions’ (2021) 16(S1) Asian Journal of Comparative Law S40-S59
- Cited by the Pakistani Supreme Court in Sunni Ittehad Council v Election Commission of Pakistan (2024)
- ‘Political Parties in Constitutional Theory’ (2020) 73(1) Current Legal Problems 89-125
- Cited by the Pakistani Supreme Court in Sunni Ittehad Council v Election Commission of Pakistan (2024)
- ‘Killing a Constitution with a Thousand Cuts: Executive Aggrandizement and Party-State Fusion in India’ (2020) 14(1) Law & Ethics of Human Rights 49-95
- Quoted by The Economist, The Wire
- Focus of a blog symposium organized by Law and Other Things
- ‘Religion in Human Rights Law: A Normative Restatement’ (co-authored with Dr Jane Norton, 2020) 18(1) International Journal of Constitutional Law 111-129
- ‘The Right to Freedom of Religion and the Right against Religious Discrimination: Theoretical Distinctions’ (co-authored with Dr Jane Norton, 2019) 17(4) International Journal of Constitutional Law 1125-1145
- Received a Special Mention for the 2020 ICON Best Paper Prize
- ‘The Indian Supreme Court’s Identity Crisis: A Constitutional Court or a Court of Appeals?’ (2020) 4(1) Indian Law Review 1-30
- ‘Political Insurance for the (Relative) Poor: How Liberal Constitutionalism could Resist Plutocracy’ (2019) 8(3) Global Constitutionalism 536-570
- ‘Constitutional Directives: Morally-Committed Political Constitutionalism’ (2019) 82(4) Modern Law Review 603-632
- ‘Executive Aggrandizement in Established Democracies: A Crisis of Liberal Democratic Constitutionalism’ (2019) 17(1) International Journal of Constitutional Law 342–356
- ‘Directive Principles and the Expressive Accommodation of Ideological Dissenters’ (2018) 16(2) International Journal of Constitutional Law 389–420
- ‘Indirect Discrimination Law: Causation, Explanation and Coat-Tailers’ (2016) 132 Law Quarterly Review 35–41
- Cited before the UK Supreme Court in Essop v. Home Office (2017)
- ‘Constitutional Avoidance in Social Rights Adjudication’ (co-authored with Dr Farrah Ahmed, 2015) 35(3) Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 607–625
- ‘Koushal v Naz: Judges Vote to Recriminalise Homosexuality’ (2015) 78(4) Modern Law Review 672–680
- ‘“Constitution” as a Statutory Term’ (2013) 129 Law Quarterly Review 589–609
- ‘Dignity as an Expressive Norm-Neither Vacuous nor a Panacea’ (2012) 32 Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 1–19
- ‘Reading Swaraj into Article 15—A New Deal for all Minorities’ (2009) 2 NUJS Law Review 419–432
- Cited by the Indian Supreme Court in Navtej Johar v. Union of India (2018)
- ‘Beyond Reasonableness—A Rigorous Standard of Review for Article 15 Infringement’ (2008) 50(2) Journal of the Indian Law Institute 177–208
- Cited by the Indian Supreme Court in Dhariwal v Union of India 2021
Non-Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles
- ‘On Scholactivism in Constitutional Studies: Sceptical Thoughts’ (2022) 20(2) International Journal of Constitutional Law 547
- Subject of a blog symposium and response on Verfassungblog
- ‘A Case for Moderated Parliamentarism’ (2021) 7 Canadian Journal of Comparative and Contemporary Law 81-155
- Focus of a blog symposium on the IACL-AIDC Blog
- ‘Two Facets of Religion: Religious Adherence and Religious Group Membership’ (2021) 34 Harvard Human Rights Journal 231-247
- ‘The Supreme Court as a Constitutional Watchdog’ (2019) 721 Seminar 22-28
- ‘The Real Price of Parliamentary Obstruction’ (2013) 642 Seminar 37–41
- ‘Reforming the Pre-Legislative Process’ Economic and Political Weekly (18 June 2011) 27–30
- ‘Transcending Reservations—A Paradigm Shift in the Debate on Equality’ Economic and Political Weekly (20 September 2008) 8–12
- ‘Should Britain have a Written Constitution’ (with Prof Vernon Bogdanor & Prof Stefan Vogenauer, 2007) 78(4) The Political Quarterly 499–517
Teaching
Public Law (UG), Constitutionalisms in the Global South (LLM), Constitutionalism Beyond Courts (UG), Justifying Political Authority (UG), Philosophical Foundations of Discrimination Law (UG)
Engagement and impact
External Activities
Prof Khaitan was the founding General Editor of the Indian Law Reviewand founder & advisor of the Junior Faculty Forum for Indian Law Teachers. He sits on the advisory board of theInternational Journal of Comparative Law, is a member of the European University Institute's Research Council, and is a trustee of the Equal Rights Trust.
Public Engagement
Prof Khaitan was awarded the 2018 Letten Prize, a 2 Million Norwegian Kroner award given biennially to a young researcher under the age of 45 conducting excellent research of great social relevance. He is using a part of the award towards setting up the Indian Equality Law Programme, aimed at capacity-building for early-career scholars. In 2020, he was awarded the Excellence in Engagement award by the University of Melbourne. Prof Pratap Mehta said in the context of this award that "No discussion of the rights of minorities in India is now conceivable without engaging with his conceptual and legal arguments". At Oxford, he received the Oxford Policy Engagement Fellowship Award in 2020 and a special mention by the O2RB Excellence in Impact Award in 2021. In 2023, he received the India-UK Achievers Honour from the National Indian Students and Alumni Union. He helped draft the Indian Anti-Discrimination and Equality Bill, introduced in the Indian Parliament in 2017.
Prof Khaitan writes regularly for newspapers and blogs: links to his columns are available here. His podcast course on Indian constitutionalism (in Hindi), संविधान संवाद, can be downloaded here. He has served on the advisory board of the United Nation’s Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner’s effort to draft ‘A Practical Guide to Developing Comprehensive Anti-Discrimination Legislation’.