In the Public Interest: Landmark Judgements and Orders Delivered by the Supreme Court of India on Environment and Human Rights.

• Author: Klonoff, Robert H.
• Position: Book review

Many lawyers have written books recounting their most significant cases. (1) These books provide entertainment and enrichment for lawyers and nonlawyers alike. The most recent addition to this genre and, in my opinion, the most important--is the captivating book In the Public Interest written by the world-renowned public interest lawyer M.C. Mehta. (2) Mehta has spent the last twenty-five years litigating landmark environmental and human rights cases before the Supreme Court of India. (3) His three-volume book chronicles eighteen of his most important cases. Volume one contains Mehta's firsthand account of his most important lawsuits, while volumes two and three contain reprints of the actual court decisions in the cases. This set provides the reader with great insights into the mind of a legendary lawyer, and offers an introduction both to India's legal system and to its unimaginably difficult environmental and human rights problems.

U.S. readers will immediately discover that Mehta's device for litigating lawsuits has no analog in U.S. law. In almost every instance, Mehta's suits were brought as "public interest litigation." Under this device, a lawyer needs no client to proceed. Unconstrained by American doctrines of standing or case or controversy, Mehta has been able to target injustices by bringing suits on his own behalf, as a member of the public, without signing up clients. Perhaps the closest analogy in our system is the class action, but a class action requires one or more adequate representative parties who have standing to pursue individual claims. (4) Moreover, a class action attorney who mounts a successful case can look forward to attorneys' fees at the conclusion of the case. (5) There is no fee recovery for the successful public interest litigant in India, which makes Mehta's lifelong devotion to such litigation all the more remarkable.

Mehta's cases represent some of the most highly publicized and significant cases in the history of Indian jurisprudence. They include, for example, a seminal suit seeking to stop industrial pollution in Agra, which threatened the world famous Taj Mahal; a suit challenging multiple sources of pollution on the beautiful, historic, and holy Ganges River; a suit to remedy the devastating air pollution in Delhi; a suit involving a major gas leak in Delhi, often referred to as the "second Bhopal"; a suit challenging the deplorable and rampant abuse of children as laborers; and many others.

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