Professor Guruswamy recently represented gay petitioners in India’s Supreme Court, successfully arguing that India’s ban against consensual gay sex should be struck down. In its unanimous decision the justices ruled gay Indians are to be accorded all the protections of the Constitution. She will discuss the case during this year’s Goodman Lecture. Find out more about the case in this New York Times article, "India Gay Sex Ban Is Struck Down. ‘Indefensible,’ Court Says."
Dr. Menaka Guruswamy is BR Ambedkar Research Scholar and Lecturer at Columbia Law School. She also practices law before the Supreme Court of India.
Dr. Guruswamy has practiced law in New York, as an associate at Davis Polk & Wardwell. She has advised the United Nations Development Fund, New York and United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), New York and UNICEF South Sudan on various aspects of International Human Rights Law and has also supported the constitution-making process in Nepal.
In her litigation practice in India, she focusses on large constitutional rights claims, and has successfully brought reform of the bureaucracy in the country, defended federal legislation that mandates that all private schools admit disadvantaged children, challenged colonial-era laws that criminalise consensual same-sex relations. She is amicus curiae appointed by the Supreme Court in a case concerning 1528 alleged extra-judicial killings by the military and security personnel.
