PARDON

Under the Constitution of India (Article 72), the President of India can grant
a pardon or reduce the sentence of a convicted person, particularly in
cases involving capital punishment. A similar and parallel power vests in
the governors of each state under Article 161.
The president is empowered with the power to pardon under Article 72 of
the Indian Constitution. Article 72 says that the president shall have the
power to grant pardons, reprieves, respites or remissions of punishment or
to suspend, remit or commute the sentence of any person convicted of any
offence. The meaning of these terms is as follows:
There are five different types of pardoning which are mandated by law.

1. Pardon: means completely absolving the person of the crime and

letting him go free. The pardoned criminal will be like a normal
citizen.
2. Commutation: means changing the type of punishment given to the
guilty into a less harsh one, for example, a death penalty commuted
to a life sentence.
3. Reprieve: means a delay allowed in the execution of a sentence,
usually a death sentence, for a guilty person to allow him some time
to apply for Presidential Pardon or some other legal remedy to prove
his innocence or successful rehabilitation.
4. Respite: means reducing the quantum or degree of the punishment to
a criminal in view of some special circumstances, like pregnancy,
mental condition etc.
5. Remission: means changing the quantum of the punishment without
changing its nature, for example reducing twenty year rigorous
imprisonment to ten years.

Article 72 reads:
(1) The President shall have the power to grant pardons, reprieves,
respites or remission of punishment or to suspend remit or commute the
sentence of any persons convicted of any offence-
(a) in all cases where the punishment or sentence is by a court martial;
 (b) in all cases where the punishment or sentence is for an offence
against any law relating to a matter to which the executive power of the
Union extends;
(c) in all cases where the sentence is a sentence of death.
(2) Nothing in sub- clause (a) of clause (1) shall alter the power conferred
by law on any officer of the Armed Forces of the Union to suspend, remit or
commute a sentence passed by a Court Martial.
(3) Nothing in sub-clause (c) of clause (1) shall affect the power to suspend
remit or commute a sentence of death exercisable by the Governor of a
State under any law for the time being in force.

Similarly, as per article 161: Governor of a State has the power to grant
pardons, reprieves, respites or remissions of punishment or to suspend,
remit or commute the sentence of any person convicted of any offence
against any law relating to a matter to which the executive power of the
state extends. Please note that President can grant pardon to a person
awarded death sentence. But a governor of a state does not enjoy this
power.
The pardoning power of the president is not absolute. It is governed by the
advice of the Council of Ministers. This has not been discussed by the
constitution but is the practical truth. Further, the constitution does not
provide for any mechanism to question the legality of decisions of President
or governors exercising mercy jurisdiction, but the SC in Epuru Sudhakar
case has given a small window for judicial review of the pardon powers of
President and governors for the purpose of ruling out any arbitrariness. The
court has earlier held that court has retained the power of judicial review
even on a matter which has been vested by the Constitution solely in the
Executive.
Both the President and Governor are bound by the advice of their
respective Councils of Ministers and hence the exercise of this power is of
an executive character. It is therefore subject to Judicial Review as held by
the Supreme Court of India in the case of Maru Ram v. Union of
India,1980.
 UNIFORM CIVIL CODE
Uniform civil code is a common set of rules governing every citizen. Article
44 of the Directive Principles expects the state to apply these while
formulating policies for the country. Apart from being an important issue
regarding secularism in India & fundamental right to practice religion
contained in Article 25, it became one of the most controversial topics in
contemporary politics during the Shah Bano case in 1985(The Mohd. Ahmad
Khan vs. Shah Bano Begum & Ors. or the Shah Bano maintenance case is seen as one
of the legal milestones in battle for protection of rights of Muslim women. While the
Supreme Court upheld the right to alimony in the case, the judgment set off a political
battle as well as a controversy about the extent to which courts can interfere in
Muslim personal law. The case laid the ground for Muslim women’s fight for equal
rights in matters of marriage and divorce in regular courts, the most recent example
being the Shayara Bano case in which the Supreme Court invalidated the practice of
instant triple talaq).
Although Article 44 of the Indian Constitution guarantees UCC to all citizens, the
debate arose when the question of making certain laws applicable to all citizens
without abridging the fundamental right of right to practice religious functions. The
debate then focused on the Muslim Personal Law, which is partially based on the
Sharia law, permitting unilateral divorce, polygamy and putting it among
the legally applying the Sharia law. The Bano case made it a politicised
public affair because of the pro-Islamic bias of the judge and the then
incumbent congress. The law passed was repealed under tremendous
pressure and protests from the Muslims in India.
Personal laws are distinguished from public law and cover marriage,
divorce, inheritance, adoption and maintenance. Goa has a common family
law, thus being the only Indian state to have a uniform civil code.
The Special Marriage Act, 1954 permits any citizen to have a civil marriage
outside the realm of any specific religious personal law.
Personal laws were first framed during the British Raj, mainly for Hindu and
Muslim citizens. The British feared opposition from community leaders and
refrained from further interfering within this domestic sphere.
The demand for a uniform civil code was first put forward by women
activists in the beginning of the twentieth century, with the objective
of women's rights, equality and secularism. Till Independence in 1947, a
few law reforms were passed to improve the condition of women,
especially Hindu widows. In 1956, the Indian Parliament passed Hindu
Code Bill amidst significant opposition. Though a demand for a uniform civil
code was made by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, his supporters and
women activists, they had to finally accept the compromise of it being
added to the Directive Principles because of opposition from the Muslim
members in the Constituent Assembly of India.
Uniform civil code has fallen victim of religious intolerance arrogance
resistance against change an inherent prejudice, the problem of uniform
civil code is still as it was at the time of the framing of the constitution
Two conflicting arguments are put forward the claim of one side is that the
implementation of the provisions contained in article 44 amounts to grave
value of Indian democracy the claim of the other side is that logical
probability appears to be that the code would cause this satisfaction and
disintegration than serve a common umbrella to promote unity and national
solidarity
the only one law has been passed in part independence period that
regulate family relations of all Indians irrespective of their religions the act
was enacted in 1954 by Parliament and is known as special marriage act

the uniformity in civil code is becoming a distant dream in India there are
many reasons for it first there is inherent limitation of codification that it can
be done only with respect to public laws and not the personal laws this is
the reason why even in the area of Hindu laws despite the generalisation
and securitization of personal laws customary laws have been left
unaffected secondly the act of bridging the gap between the Hindu and
Muslim personal laws is becoming impossible as the good the fires have
been very a lot about the problem of minority religion and more particular
their attitude towards Muslim personal law have been very soft there are
two reasons for it Muslim population is substantial so as to this list any
reform and they are too sensitive to allow any encroachment on their
religion
 RELEVANCE OF SOCIOLOGY IN LAW
If societies are based upon agreed upon laws, then they are very much
interrelated subjects. They are symbiotic, interwoven, interconnected.
When someone commits a crime against another person or their property,
they will have to face the consequences in a court of law. Or reduce it to a
smaller group such as a tribe. Even amongst members of a tribe, there are
laws that may only be verbal, or perhaps not even as formal as that. They
are followed because children see them in the form of examples as they
grow up. Within each tribe, culture or society, some form of punishment is
enforced when a cultural norm is broken. Law can be analyzed
sociologically as a method of doing something. Law can be studied as a
social process, instrumented by individuals during social interaction.
Sociologically, law consists of the behaviors, situations, and conditions for
making, interpreting and applying legal rules that are backed by the state’s
legitimate coercive apparatus for enforcement.
The sociology of law (or legal sociology) is often described as a sub-
discipline of sociology or an interdisciplinary approach within legal studies.
While some see it as a field of research caught up in the disciplinary
tensions and competitions between the two established disciplines of law
and sociology. Yet, others regard it neither as a sub-discipline of sociology
nor as a branch of legal studies and, instead, present it as a field of
research on its own right within a broader social science tradition. For
example, Roger Cotterrell describes the sociology of law without reference
to mainstream sociology as “the systematic, theoretically grounded,
empirical study of law as a set of social practices or as an aspect or field of
social experience”. The sociology of law became clearly established as an
academic field of learning and empirical research after the Second World
War.

After World War II, the study of law was not central in sociology, although
some well-known sociologists did write about the role of law in society. In
the work of the Talcott Parsons, for instance, law is conceived as an
essential mechanism of social control. In response to the criticisms that
were developed against functionalism, other sociological perspectives of
law emerged. 1. Critical sociologists developed a perspective of law as an
instrument of power. 2. However, other theorists in the sociology of law,
such as Philip Selznick, argued that modern law became increasingly
responsive to a society’s needs and had to be approached morally as well.
3. Still other scholars, most notably the American sociologist Donald Black,
developed a resolutely scientific theory of law on the basis of a paradigm of
pure sociology.
4. Equally broad in orientation, but again different, is the autopoietic
systems theory of the German sociologist Niklas Luhmann, who sees law
as normatively closed, but cognitively open system.

The essential insight underlying all sociological approaches to law is that

law is a social phenomenon that should, therefore, be studied
sociologically. Beyond this core unifying orientation, sociology and law,
otherwise known as the sociology of law, or law and sociology, consists of
a variety of different approaches, assumptions, and attitudes. This internal
proliferation of approaches is the product of diversity at two different levels.
1. First: sociology and law are contrasting bodies of knowledge. Sociology
is a social science focused on the study of society, and like all such
disciplines its overarching goal is the gathering of knowledge. Law, in
contrast, is a practical activity that focuses on completing certain
fundamental tasks, including promulgating and enforcing rules, responding
to disputes, and maintaining order.

2. Second: each of these contributing bodies of knowledge is in its own way

internally driven, with sociology divided among various competing schools
of thought and law divided among practitioners and theorists (adhering to
competing schools of thought). When sociology and law are brought
together, the differences between them, and the internal divisions that
characterize each, are manifested in the combination of the two. In the
United States, the primary academic influences in bringing sociology to law
were philosophical pragmatism, sociological jurisprudence, and legal
realism; the key figures were Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Roscoe Pound,
and Karl Llewellyn. These schools of thought and figures were leaders in
the critique of formalistic approaches to the law that dominated at the end
of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century. Under formalist
views, law was a gapless, logically coherent self-contained system that
could be discovered and applied exclusively through consideration of legal
concepts, principles, and rules, without regard to social context or
consequences.