Understanding key verdicts by top court over last decade

Over the past decade, India has witnessed significant conflict within and around several democratic institutions meant to act as a check on executive power.

One of the most important theatres of conflict has been the judiciary more specifically, the Supreme Court. The controversy over the court's ruling last week on the Modi government's abrogation of Article 370 in Jammu & Kashmir serves as a case in point.

A new book by the legal scholar Gautam Bhatia, Unsealed Covers: A Decade of the Constitution, the Courts and the State takes readers through some of the most controversial cases that have come before the court during the last decade.

Bhatia was the featured guest on last week's episode of Grand Tamasha, a weekly podcast on Indian politics and policy co-produced by HT and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Bhatia's new book is a collection of essays he's published over the past decade on his influential "Indian Constitutional Law and Philosophy" blog.