Which of the following are the components of the Indian Legal System? 1. Basic values and principles enshrined in the Constitution 2. Rights and obligations conferred by ordinary statutes 3. Organizational set-up to enforce rights and obligations within the constitutional norms 4. Legal and judicial persons Select the answer using the code given below:
- (a)1, 2, 3 and 4
- (b)1, 2 and 4 only
- (c)1, 2 and 3 only
- (d)3 and 4 only
Correct — A, 1, 2, 3 and 4. This is a definitional item, and every listed element belongs. A legal system is not only its rules: it is the constitutional values that give the rules their direction, the ordinary statutes that create day-to-day rights and duties, the machinery that enforces them, and the persons on whom the law operates. In India the first layer is the Constitution's basic values and principles — the Preamble, the fundamental rights and the directive principles. The second is the body of ordinary legislation, from the Contract Act to the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita. The third is the institutional set-up — courts, tribunals, the police, prosecutors and the bar — which enforces those rights and duties within constitutional limits. The fourth is legal and judicial persons: natural persons and also the artificial persons the law recognises, such as companies, registered societies and deities in temple litigation. Since no listed element is foreign to the system, the correct choice is the one that includes all four.
- (b)1, 2 and 4 only — Drops the enforcement machinery. Rights that no institution can enforce are not part of a working legal system at all; courts, tribunals and the enforcement agencies are as much a component as the statutes.
- (c)1, 2 and 3 only — Drops legal and judicial persons. The law operates on persons, and it recognises artificial persons such as companies and societies alongside natural ones — without them there is nothing for the rules to attach to.
- (d)3 and 4 only — Keeps only the machinery and the persons and throws away both the constitutional values and the ordinary statutes, which are the substance the machinery applies.
A legal system is usually described as having a normative layer, an institutional layer and a personal layer. In India the normative layer is two-tiered: the Constitution, which is supreme, and ordinary legislation, which must conform to it. The institutional layer runs from the Supreme Court and the High Courts down through the district judiciary, tribunals and the enforcement agencies. The personal layer is the set of entities the law recognises as bearers of rights and duties, which includes artificial persons created by law.
Items of this shape — a list of unobjectionable descriptions and a code that offers 'all of them' — are usually answered 'all of them', because an examiner who wanted a false element would plant something concrete and checkable, as the same paper does elsewhere by turning 'urban planning' into 'rural planning'. Read each element and ask whether it could be excluded from any working legal system. None can. The one that gives candidates pause is the fourth, because 'legal and judicial persons' sounds like jargon; it simply means the natural and artificial persons on whom rights and obligations rest.
- The Constitution is the supreme law of India, and Article 13 makes laws inconsistent with the fundamental rights void to the extent of the inconsistency.
- Ordinary statutes are made by Parliament and the State Legislatures within the fields of the Seventh Schedule.
- Enforcement runs through the Supreme Court, the High Courts, the district judiciary, tribunals and the executive agencies charged with implementing the law.
- Indian law recognises artificial persons, such as companies and registered societies, as bearers of rights and duties alongside natural persons.
- Article 141 makes the law declared by the Supreme Court binding on all courts within India, so judicial decisions are themselves a source of legal norms.
- Constitutional values and principles — the Preamble, fundamental rights and directive principles, which set the limits
- Ordinary statutes — the rights and obligations created by Parliament and the State Legislatures
- Institutional set-up — courts, tribunals and enforcement agencies that give those rights effect within constitutional norms
- Legal and judicial persons — natural persons and the artificial persons the law recognises, on whom the whole structure operates
Norms, then machinery, then the persons the machinery acts on. Remove any one layer and the system stops working.
- Treating an 'all of the above' code as automatically wrong; in definitional items it is very often right.
- Reading 'legal and judicial persons' as meaning only judges and lawyers — it means the entities on whom rights and duties rest.
- Assuming ordinary statutes stand outside the constitutional layer; they are valid only so far as they conform to it.
As a definitional multi-statement item on what a legal or constitutional system is composed of, usually answered by taking all the listed elements.
No directly related past PYQ was found.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Which Article of the Constitution of India declares that laws inconsistent with the fundamental rights are void to the extent of the inconsistency?
- (a)Article 12
- (b)Article 13
- (c)Article 14
- (d)Article 32
Answer(b) Article 13 — it makes pre-constitutional and post-constitutional laws void so far as they take away or abridge the fundamental rights.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Under Article 141 of the Constitution of India, the law declared by the Supreme Court is binding on
- (a)all courts within the territory of India
- (b)the High Courts alone
- (c)the district judiciary alone
- (d)no court, since each court decides independently
Answer(a) all courts within the territory of India — which is why judicial precedent is a source of law in the Indian legal system.