The southern jurist as a teacher of laws: an interview with Upendra Baxi

Abstract

This interview was conducted with Upendra Baxi in early October, 2015 as part of the authors’ Eminent Jurists Video Archive Project. The interview covers Baxi’s formative early years in Rajkot, his education and taking up of a life of a legal scholar, including his basic legal training at the Government Law College in Bombay, graduate education at Berkeley (California), and his early career as a lecturer at the University of Sydney. In a wide ranging discussion, with his usual mixture of intellectual dexterity, endless generosity and good humour, Baxi illuminatingly discusses his understanding of the significant notions of normative expectations, eurocentrism, self-determination, along with the ongoing significance and legacies of B.R. Ambedkar and M.K. Gandhi, the experience of proposing (and eventually teaching) a course on aboriginal peoples’ rights in a setter-colony, and the duties and responsibilities that come with inhabiting the roles of being teachers and students of law, amongst other things.