India runs the common law for over 1.4 billion people. The tradition arrived through colonial courts and codes, and independent India kept it — adversarial procedure, binding precedent, English as the language of the higher courts — while placing it under a constitution of extraordinary ambition and length, with an entrenched chapter of fundamental rights at its core.
The result is the family's most powerful judiciary. India's Supreme Court can strike down not only ordinary laws but even constitutional amendments that damage the constitution's 'basic structure' — and its doors are open to public interest claims in a way no other final court matches.
The directly elected Lok Sabha determines government on the Westminster model; the Rajya Sabha, chosen mainly by state legislatures, represents the states. The President is a largely ceremonial head of state elected by the legislatures.
The Seventh Schedule divides subjects into Union, State and Concurrent lists — where Canada has two lists, India has three, with residual power to the Union. On concurrent subjects, central law prevails.
Each state has an elected legislature and government. But the judiciary is not divided: unlike the US, India has a single integrated court pyramid applying both central and state law.
Equality, speech, life and personal liberty, religion, and constitutional remedies — enforceable against the state, with the courts empowered to strike down inconsistent laws. Directive Principles sit alongside: policy goals that guide, but do not bind.
Final court for everything, and a constitutional court of first instance under Article 32, which lets anyone petition it directly for enforcement of fundamental rights. It sits in small benches of two or three, with larger constitution benches for major questions.
Courts strike down laws that violate the constitution, and under the basic structure doctrine can even invalidate constitutional amendments. There is no notwithstanding clause; the constitution, as the courts read it, is final.
Since the 1990s, appointments to the higher judiciary have been controlled by a 'collegium' of the seniormost judges — unique in the democratic world. Parliament's 2014 attempt to replace it with an appointments commission was itself struck down as violating the basic structure.
Standing rules are relaxed so that public-spirited citizens can litigate on behalf of others; courts can appoint commissions, monitor compliance, and keep cases open for years. The open door is celebrated — and criticised as governance by judiciary.
Jury trials were phased out after the 1960s; all trials are by judge alone. Precedent otherwise works on the standard model — Supreme Court decisions are declared by the constitution itself to bind all courts.
The system's defining operational challenge is arrears: tens of millions of cases pending across all levels, with disputes sometimes running decades. Court modernisation and alternative forums are perennial reform projects.
Canada and India both bolted entrenched rights onto Westminster government — thirty-two years apart. The influence has flowed both ways: Indian courts cite Canadian Charter proportionality analysis, and Canadian scholarship watches India's basic structure doctrine as the boldest answer to a question Canada solved differently, with section 33.