The Evolution Of The Environmental Public Litigation In India In The Context Of The Judicial Activism

The public interest litigation originated in the United States in the1960s. As a kindof litigation designed to protect the public interest, the public interest litigation plays avery important role in maintaining social fairness and justice, improving the people’slivelihood, and promoting the reform of civil rights, it has become one of the mostimportant methods to protect the fundamental rights of citizens. The successfulexperience of the United States made many other countries follow and establish thepublic interest litigation of themselves, among these countries, India is one of themost typical examples.India is the first Asian country to introduce the public interest litigation. At thesame time of learning and emulating, according to its own specific social andeconomic circumstances, India carried out innovative reforms of the public interestlitigation of the United States with its own characteristics, built a unique kind ofpublic interest litigation in the end of the1970s, and began to intervene in many areasof social life. Later, India introduced the litigation system in the environmentalpollution settlement mechanism, in order to resolve a large number of serious, andurgent environmental issues. From the beginning of the1980s, the Indian SupremeCourt started to hear a lot of environmental public interest litigation, which hasbrought out important significance, and profound impact. The establishment of thislitigation leads to the social concern of the environmental pollution problems,improves the public awareness of environmental protection, and speeds up theprocess of environmental legislation. This litigation has played a crucial role forenvironmental protection in India.During the prosecution and adjudication in these cases, the Supreme Court of Indiabrings a new definition and interpretation for the basic problems of environmentalpublic interest litigation by ways of precedents gradually, such as the range of claims,the plaintiff’s main qualifications and so on. At the same time, the Supreme Court alsochanges in simplified proceedings, the improvement of litigation efficiency by ways of a series of lawsuits, which has made a bold attempt to obtain a very satisfied legaleffect. Thus, in the course of the emergence and development of environmental publicinterest litigation, the Supreme Court is always playing a crucial positive role. Thereis an important impetus for the initiative to promote the exercise of its judicialfunctions, which is judicial activism. As a long-standing theory of justice, judicialactivism has a very profound impact on environmental public interest litigation inIndia from the initial to the final maturity of the entire molding process. Under theguidance of judicial activism, the tentacles of the public interest litigation began tostretch in the field of environmental protection, and made environmental publicinterest litigation an important and effective way to solve environmental problemsthrough the positive changes.However, at the same time, the judicial activism also brings a hint of risk for thedevelopment of environmental public interest litigation, mainly for the expansion ofthe judicial function to intervene more drawbacks to the process of decision-makingand implementation. The professionalism and proceeding limit of court result in theunfairness of the judicial decision-making, reduce the operability of the judgment,and lower the effective implementation of the judgment. Besides, the situation thatthe court leads the process of execution not only increases the pressure of work, butalso deepens the dependence of the administrative. These problems are not conduciveto the full implementation of the judgment and lower the efficiency of the solution toenvironmental problems. Therefore, the limit to the judicial functions of the court andthe prevention of the emergence of excessive judicial activism, have become thedirection of future environmental public interest litigation in India.This article attempts to spy upon the generation and evolution on Indianenvironmental public interest litigation from the perspective of judicial activism, setforth its important role in promoting the environmental public interest litigation,hidden dangers and risks that may arise, and look forward to its future developmentdirection.