5.The Constitution and the Exception Trap скачать в хорошем качестве

5.The Constitution and the Exception Trap

Constitutions are not fragile documents. They are designed to absorb conflict, contradiction, and change. What they are not designed to absorb indefinitely is exception without closure. India’s Constitution did not abandon equality. It reinterpreted it—carefully, incrementally, and with moral intent. The problem that emerged over time was not contradiction, but structural imbalance: exceptions multiplied, while the mechanisms meant to limit them weakened. This chapter examines how constitutional provisions meant as temporary correctives became permanent features of governance—and how this process strained the meaning of equality without ever formally rejecting it. The result is not constitutional collapse. It is constitutional fatigue.