Mahesh Menon
Faculty of Law
About me
Mahesh Menon is an Assistant Professor of Law at Sai University, Chennai, India, from where he is on a sabbatical to pursue Doctoral Studies. He has taught at the National University of Juridical Sciences Kolkata at the National Law School of India University, Bangalore. After completing his master’s degree in Human Rights Law from the NLSIU, Bangalore, for a brief period he worked as a legal officer with the Asian-African Legal Consultative Organization. He has also practiced law, with a focus on Constitutional and Administrative Law. His research interests are on human rights of vulnerable groups in the context of the environment.
About my research project
My research aims to explore what are the outcomes of domestic courts applying the doctrine of sustainable development (“SD”) and what ideologies influence the outcomes of these litigations. Taking the case of India, I seek to make an account of the interests that were represented in sustainability litigations and how different interest groups have been received by the court - to identify the barriers that prevent all affected groups from reaching the court. While the 2030 agenda calls for “ensuring equal access to justice for all” (16.3) and ensuring “inclusive, participatory and representative decision making at all levels” (16.7), the current indicators for these goals do not capture access to environmental justice through courts for all groups. In the light of the increasing tendency on the part of domestic courts to apply SD, this research will contribute to clarifying the role played by access to justice in shaping the outcomes of judicial application of SD and strengthen the case for the inclusion of a wider set of indicators to measure these goals.