Democratic Judicial Architecture: A Comparative Study of India and the United States

• JAGANNATHAM BEGARI

  Central University of Gujarat

• RAJ KAMAL

  Central University of Gujarat

This article undertakes a comparative constitutional analysis of judicial fairness and accountability in India and the United States, examining how distinct constitutional designs and judicial philosophies shape responses to executive power in contemporary democracies. While both systems are formally committed to the rule of law, separation of powers, and rights protection, the article argues that they operationalize fairness and accountability through fundamentally different institutional and normative logics. Drawing on the framework of transformative constitutionalism, the Indian constitutional order, reinforced by the Basic Structure Doctrine, authorises courts to prioritise substantive fairness, proportionality, and the protection of personal liberty through active judicial oversight. In contrast, the United States adheres to a restraint-oriented model of judicial review rooted in liberal constitutionalism, emphasizing procedural fairness, institutional continuity, and accountability through structural limits rather than rights-expansive intervention. The article distinguishes analytically between judicial fairness understood as courts’ protection of liberty, equality, and due process and judicial accountability, defined as constitutional mechanisms that constrain executive authority and preserve democratic balance. These distinctions are explored through a comparative analysis of Kejriwal v. Directorate of Enforcement (2024) and Trump v. United States (2024), selected as contemporary constitutional stress tests involving executive power, criminal process, and judicial limits. The analysis demonstrates that India’s judiciary tends to foreground individual liberty and proportionality, even at the risk of judicial overreach, while the U.S. Supreme Court prioritizes institutional stability and separation of powers, sometimes at the cost of insulating executive authority from direct legal accountability. The article concludes that neither model is normatively superior. Instead, each reflects historically conditioned trade-offs between judicial fairness, democratic accountability, and constitutional resilience, underscoring the importance of context-sensitive evaluation in comparative constitutional scholarship.

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