Law, Justice, and the Interpretive Gap in Indian Constitutional Adjudication

This paper examines the structural gap between legal validity and substantive justice within the Indian constitutional framework, focusing on landmark Supreme Court decisions as interpretive sites where justice is made or unmade. The study employs doctrinal and analytical legal research methodology, engaging in close reading of constitutional provisions and judicial decisions as interpretive texts rather than merely examining their outcomes. Cases were selected based on constitutional significance, demonstrable tension between procedural legality and substantive justice, and longitudinal jurisprudential influence. Key findings reveal that the gap between law and justice widens under three structural conditions: linguistic indeterminacy in constitutional language, institutional constraints during political crises, and social and structural inequality that renders formal rights practically inaccessible. The comparative analysis of ADM Jabalpur v. Shivkant Shukla (1976) and Maneka Gandhi v. Union of India (1978) demonstrates that the same constitutional text, unmodified, produced diametrically opposed outcomes within two years – a difference attributable solely to judicial interpretive philosophy. The paper concludes that law contains no internal mechanism guaranteeing just outcomes; the guarantee, where it exists, lies in the quality of interpretation and the transparency of interpretive reasoning. Practical implications include the need for constitutional reform that acknowledges interpretive contingency, demands greater judicial accountability, and addresses structural inequalities – particularly India’s undertrial crisis, in which 77% of prisoners are unconvicted – that render formal rights meaningless for the majority of citizens.