Pre-constitutional Laws in India: Beyond Presumption of Constitutionality

Recent judgements of the Supreme Court of India have done away with presumption of constitutionality for pre-constitutional laws in India. Regarded as one of the core principles in the study of interpretation of statutes, presumption of constitutionality assumes great significance when constitutionality of any law is under challenge. Removal of this presumption for pre-constitutional laws has far-reaching potential on judicial scrutiny of vires of pre-constitutional laws. However, the implications of such removal on pre-constitutional laws have not been studied. This article is an attempt to study such implications. I shall take example of Indian law on sedition, which is a pre-constitutional law, to demonstrate the impact of removal of the presumption.