Indian Polity Quiz: Important Constitutional Doctrines: Pith and Substance, Eclipse and Severability

In that case a 1947 motor vehicles law of Central Provinces and Berar had become unenforceable because it clashed with the freedom of trade under Article 19(1)(g).

Article 246 read with the Seventh Schedule gives Parliament and the State Legislatures separate fields of law making, but subjects overlap in practice, so a court must find the true nature and character of the law, its pith and substance, and ignore incidental encroachment on the other list.

The doctrine means that a legislature cannot do by an indirect route what the Constitution forbids it to do directly; if it has no competence over a subject, no clever drafting can give it that competence.

The petitioner had settled his tax liability under a provision later found to violate Article 14, and it was argued that by agreeing to the settlement he had waived his right to equality.

That clause says that no law made by Parliament shall be deemed invalid on the ground that it would have extra-territorial operation, and the courts have built on it the rule that a State law too may apply to an object or person outside the State if there is a…

The Bengal Money Lenders Act of 1940 limited the interest and the amount recoverable by money lenders, a provincial subject, but it also affected promissory notes, which belonged to the central list.

That section barred a detained person from disclosing in court the grounds of his detention or the representation he had made against it.

Clause (1) says that if a State law is repugnant to a law made by Parliament on a Concurrent subject, the parliamentary law prevails and the State law is void to the extent of the repugnancy.

A bench of thirteen judges held by a majority of seven to six that Parliament may amend any part of the Constitution under Article 368 but cannot destroy or damage its basic structure or essential features.

An eleven judge bench held by six to five that Parliament cannot abridge Fundamental Rights by amendment, but the Court did not want to unsettle the land reform amendments already acted upon, so it declared that its ruling would operate only for the future.

Article 13(1) makes a pre-Constitution law void only to the extent of its inconsistency with the Fundamental Rights, so the Supreme Court in Bhikaji Narain Dhakras, 1955, held that such a law is not erased but merely eclipsed, staying unenforceable until the shadow is lifted, after which it revives.