Can Economic Theory Be Informative for the Judiciary? Affirmative Action in India via Vertical and Horizontal Reservations

Tayfun S\"onmez and M. Bumin Yenmez
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Tayfun Sönmez

Papers from arXiv.org

Abstract: Sanctioned by its constitution, India is home to the world's most comprehensive affirmative action program, where historically discriminated groups are protected with vertical reservations implemented as "set asides," and other disadvantaged groups are protected with horizontal reservations implemented as "minimum guarantees." A mechanism mandated by the Supreme Court in 1995 suffers from important anomalies, triggering countless litigations in India. Foretelling a recent reform correcting the flawed mechanism, we propose the 2SMG mechanism that resolves all anomalies, and characterize it with desiderata reflecting laws of India. Subsequently rediscovered with a high court judgment and enforced in Gujarat, 2SMG is also endorsed by Saurav Yadav v. State of UP (2020), in a Supreme Court ruling that rescinded the flawed mechanism. While not explicitly enforced, 2SMG is indirectly enforced for an important subclass of applications in India, because no other mechanism satisfies the new mandates of the Supreme Court.

Date: 2021-02, Revised 2021-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-des
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://arxiv.org/pdf/2102.03186 Latest version (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Can Economic Theory be Informative for the Judiciary? Affirmative Action in India via Vertical and Horizontal Reservations (2021)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:arx:papers:2102.03186

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Papers from arXiv.org
Bibliographic data for series maintained by arXiv administrators (help@arxiv.org).