Constitutional Morality: Theoretical Foundations, Judicial Application, And the Future of Constitutional Law

Abstract

Abstract Constitutional morality is a normative and interpretive doctrine that obliges state, institutions, and its citizens to be loyal to the substantive values in the workings of a constitution liberty, equality, dignity, pluralism, instead of some fleeting majoritarian or social taste. The concept, which was first seen in the writings of George Grote about Athenian democracy, and has been revived in Indian constitutionalist debates by Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, emerged in the Constituent Assembly Debates, and it has since been transformed from a moral warning about the vulnerability of constitutional government to a tool of interpretive judicial activism by constitutional courts. This paper follows the conceptual lineage of constitutional morality, contrasts constitutional morality with social or public morality, and looks at how the Supreme Court of India operationalizes constitutional morality by reference to landmark cases including Justice K.S. Puttaswamy Union of India, Indian Young Lawyers Association v. State of Kerala (the Sabarimala case), and Manoj Narula v. Union of India. It places constitutional morality in the larger context of transformative constitutionalism and weighs the main jurisprudential virtue of the doctrine its power to protect minority and individual rights against majoritarian profligation against its primary vice: definitional indeterminacy, leading to accusations of judicial subjectivity and anti-majoritarian judicial overreach. It finishes by concluding that constitutional morality despite its conceptual imprecision, plays an essential role in maintaining constitutional democracy by tying judicial review to the transformative commitment of the text as opposed to the current social consensus.