Tarun Khaitan

Tarun Khaitan is the Professor (Chair) of Public Law at the LSE Law School and an Honorary Professorial Fellow at Melbourne Law School. Previously, he has been the Head of Research at the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights (Oxford), the Professor of Public Law and Legal Theory (Oxford), Vice Dean (Faculty of Law, Oxford), and a Visiting Professor of Law (Chicago, Harvard, and NYU law schools). His primary research interests include comparative constitutional law, legal theory, and discrimination law.

He completed his undergraduate studies (BA LLB Hons) at the National Law School (Bangalore) in 2004. He then came to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and completed his postgraduate studies at Exeter College. His research has been cited in over a dozen cases by influential courts, including the Indian Supreme Court, the Canadian Supreme Court, the European Court of Human Rights, the Israeli Supreme Court, the Madras High Court, the High Court of Kerala, and the Superior Court of Quebec. His work has also been cited in an opinion of Advocate General Medina before the Court of Justice of the European Union.

Publications

Books

Constitutional Resilience in South Asia

co-edited with Swati Jhaveri & Dinesha Samararatne, Bloomsbury, 2023

Foundations of Indirect Discrimination Law

co-edited with Prof Hugh Collins, Bloomsbury, 2018

A Theory of Discrimination Law

OUP 2015, Oxford Scholarship Online 2015, South Asia edition 2015, paperback 2016

Journal Articles & Book Chapters

Peer-Reviewed Articles

Projects

The Anti-Discrimination and Equality Bill 2017 (as advised by Dr Tarunabh Khaitan) was introduced in 16th Lok Sabha on 10 March 2017, and lapsed with its dissolution. The Bill was an effort to respond, among several other events, to Rohith Vemula’s tragic suicide, which had put the need for an antidiscrimination legislation back on the political agenda.

In a five-part Republic Day special series ‘Hum Bharat Ke Log’, Tarunabh Khaitan, a professor of law at Oxford University explains the circumstances under which the preamble to the Indian Constitution was written.

Judicial Citations

Interviews