About the Speaker:
Shruti Rajagopalan is an Assistant Professor of Economics at State University of New York, Purchase College. She earned her Ph.D. in economics in 2013 from George Mason University and was most recently a Bradley Visiting Researcher in the Department of Economics at New York University. Shruti's broad area of interest is the economic analysis of comparative legal and political systems. Her research interests specifically include law and economics, public choice theory, and constitutional economics. Shruti is currently working on the economic analysis of amendments to the Indian Constitution. Her research has been published in peer-reviewed journals, law reviews, and books. She also enjoys writing in the popular press and has published opinion editorials on Indian political economy in The Wall Street Journal, Mint, The Hindu: Business Line, and The Indian Express.
About the Lecture:
In this lecture, Shruti will provide a general framework to analyze the role of an independent judiciary in rent seeking. Using evidence from Indian legislative and constitutional history, and the legislation in the Ninth Schedule, she will show that it is not the independence of the judiciary in isolation, but the constellation of constitutional rules enforced by an independent judiciary, that determines the amount and durability of rents and wealth transfers at the constitutional level. This discussion relates to the broader theme of constitutional maintenance in India.