ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳

Professor Tarun Khaitan

Professor Tarun Khaitan

Professor (Chair) of Public Law

ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ Law School

Room No
Cheng Kin Ku Building 7.22
Languages
Bengali, English, Hindi
Key Expertise
public law, legal theory, constitutional design, discrimination law

About me

Tarun Khaitan is the Professor (Chair) of Public Law at the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ 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 ).

Research interests

His primary research interests are comparative public law, legal theory, discrimination law. He is currently working on a monograph on constitutional design.

Teaching

Books

Prof Khaitan’s monograph entitled  (OUP 2015 hbk, South Asia edition and Oxford Scholarship Online, 2016 pbk) was reviewed very positively in leading journals, including in, where Sophia Moreau said "In this magnificent and wide-ranging book ... Khaitan attempts what very few others have tried." In , Deborah Hellman said that its 'ambitious scope and the careful argumentation it contains make it one of the best in the field’.  In his , 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  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  (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 .

He co-edited (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.

(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.

Another collection titled The Entrenchment of Democracy, co-edited with Profs Tom Ginsburg & Aziz Huq, is forthcoming with Cambridge University Press in 2024.

Book chapters

  • in Catherine O’Regan, Sujit Choudhry, and Carlos Bernal eds., Research Handbook on Constitutional Interpretation (Elgar 2024 forthcoming)
  • in Jeff King and Richard Bellamy eds, Cambridge Handbook of Constitutional Theory (CUP 2024 forthcoming)
  • in Vicki Jackson and Yasmin Dawood eds., Constitutionalism and the Right to Effective Government (CUP 2023) 193-205
  • in Martha Nussbaum et al eds., The Empire of Disgust (OUP 2018) 348–368
  • (co-authored with Prof Hugh Collins) in Hugh Collins and Tarunabh Khaitan eds., Foundations of Indirect Discrimination Law (Bloomsbury 2018) 1–30
    • 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)
  • (co-authored with Dr Sandy Steel) in Hugh Collins and Tarunabh Khaitan eds., Foundations of Indirect Discrimination Law (Bloomsbury 2018) 197–128
    • Cited by the Canadian Supreme Court in Fraser v Canada 2020 SCC 28
  • ‘ in Max Planck Encyclopedia of Comparative Constitutional Law (Max Planck Foundation for International Peace and Rule of Law 2017)
  • in Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen ed, Routledge Handbook of the Ethics of Discrimination (Routledge 2017) 30–41
    • Cited by the CJEU Advocate General in Instituto Nacional de la Seguridad Social (Case C‑625/20)
  • in Sujit Choudhry et al eds, The Oxford Handbook of Indian Constitutional Law (OUP 2016) 699–719
    • Cited by the Supreme Court of India in (2021)
  • in Vidhu Verma ed, Unequal Worlds (OUP 2015) 119–163
  • in Deborah Hellman & Sophia Moreau eds, Philosophical Foundations of Discrimination Law (OUP 2013) 138–162

Articles

A full list of Prof Khaitan’s publications is available .

Peer Reviewed Articles

  • (2023) 56 VRU|World Comparative Law 17-32
  • (co-authored with Prof Sandy Steel, 2023) 43 Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 76-96
  • (co-authored with Prof Sandy Steel, 2022) 28 Legal Theory 325-351
  • (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)
  • (2020) 73(1) Current Legal Problems 89-125
    • Cited by the Pakistani Supreme Court in Sunni Ittehad Council v Election Commission of Pakistan (2024)
  • (2020) 14(1) Law & Ethics of Human Rights 49-95
    • Quoted by ,
    • Focus of a organized by Law and Other Things
  • (co-authored with Dr Jane Norton, 2020) 18(1) International Journal of Constitutional Law 111-129
  • (co-authored with Dr Jane Norton, 2019) 17(4) International Journal of Constitutional Law 1125-1145
    • Received a Special Mention for the
  • (2020) 4(1) Indian Law Review 1-30
  • ‘’ (2019) 8(3) Global Constitutionalism 536-570
  • (2019) 82(4) Modern Law Review 603-632
  • (2019) 17(1) International Journal of Constitutional Law 342–356
  • ’ (2018) 16(2) International Journal of Constitutional Law 389–420
  • (2016) 132 Law Quarterly Review 35–41
    • Cited before the UK Supreme Court in Essop v. Home Office (2017)
  • (co-authored with Dr Farrah Ahmed, 2015) 35(3) Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 607–625
  • (2015) 78(4) Modern Law Review 672–680
  • (2013) 129 Law Quarterly Review 589–609
  • (2012) 32 Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 1–19
  • (2009) 2 NUJS Law Review 419–432
    • Cited by the Indian Supreme Court in Navtej Johar v. Union of India (2018)
  • (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

  • (2022) 20(2) International Journal of Constitutional Law 547
    • Subject of a on Verfassungblog
  • (2021) 7 Canadian Journal of Comparative and Contemporary Law 81-155
    • Focus of a blog symposium on the
  • (2021) 34 Harvard Human Rights Journal 231-247
  • (2019) 721 Seminar 22-28
  • (2013) 642 Seminar 37–41
  • Economic and Political Weekly (18 June 2011) 27–30
  • Economic and Political Weekly (20 September 2008) 8–12
  • (with Prof Vernon Bogdanor & Prof Stefan Vogenauer, 2007) 78(4) The Political Quarterly 499–517

Policy briefings

External activities

Prof Khaitan was the founding General Editor of the  and founder & advisor of the . He sits on the advisory board of the, is a member of the , and is a trustee of the .

Public engagement

Prof Khaitan was awarded the , 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 , aimed at capacity-building for early-career scholars. In 2020, he was  by the University of Melbourne.  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 , introduced in the Indian Parliament in 2017.

Prof Khaitan writes regularly for newspapers and blogs: links to his columns are available . His podcast course on Indian constitutionalism (in Hindi), संविधान संवाद, can be downloaded . He has served on the advisory board of the United Nation’s Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner’s effort to draft .