Dowry & Environmental law

 Dowry Prohibition Act, 1961

Name: Apoorva Sinha

College: Amity University Chhattisgarh

Dowry Prohibition Act, Indian law, enacted on May 1, 1961, intended

to prevent the giving or receiving of a dowry. Under the Dowry

Prohibition Act, dowry includes property, goods, or money given by

either party to the marriage, by the parents of either party, or by

anyone else in connection with the marriage. The Dowry Prohibition

Act applies to persons of all religions in India. The original text of the

Dowry Prohibition Act was widely judged to be ineffective in curbing

the practice of dowry. Moreover, specific forms of violence against

women continued to be linked to a failure to meet dowry demands. As

a result, the legislation underwent subsequent amendment. In 1984,

for example, it was changed to specify that presents given to a bride

or a groom at the time of a wedding are allowed. The law required,

however, that a list be maintained describing each gift, its value, the

identity of the person giving it, and the person’s relation to either

party to the marriage. The act and relevant sections of the Indian

Penal Code were further amended to protect female victims of dowry-

related violence. Another layer of legal protection was provided in

2005 under the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act.

Amendments to the original Dowry Prohibition Act also established

minimum and maximum punishments for giving and receiving dowry

and created a penalty for demanding dowry or advertising offers of

money or property in connection with a marriage. The Indian Penal

Code was also modified in 1983 to establish specific crimes of dowry-

related cruelty, dowry death, and abetment of suicide. These

enactments punished violence against women by their husbands or

their relatives when proof of dowry demands or dowry harassment

could be shown.

Frequently there is no workable solution for female victims of

domestic violence. For some victims the unrelenting cycle of violence

produces diminished self-esteem, helplessness, depression, and

exaggerated feelings of imprisonment, even the belief that they

deserve abuse. More material obstacles stand in the way of most

victims. Many are financially dependent on their abusers, and, since

many abuse victims are mothers, they particularly fear being unable to

support their children if they leave a violent partner. Many fear

reporting the crime because the police can offer no reliable protection

against retaliation. One of the worst problems is that typical abusers

often become most violent and vengeful precisely when women try to

leave; numbers of women have been murdered by male partners when

they tried to press charges or win orders of protection.

In the early 1800s most legal systems implicitly accepted wife-beating

as a husband’s right, part of his entitlement to control over the

resources and services of his wife. Feminist agitation in the 1800s

produced a sea change in public opinion, and by the end of the 19th

century most courts denied that husbands had any right to “chastise”

their wives. But few women had realistic sources of help, and most

police forces did nothing to protect women. The 1967 training manual

for the International Association of Chiefs of Police stated that arrests

in instances of domestic violence were to be made only as a “last

resort.”

Environmental Law

Name: Apoorva Sinha

College: Amity University Chhattisgarh

Evironmental law, principles, policies, directives, and regulations

enacted and enforced by local, national, or international entities to

regulate human treatment of the nonhuman world. The vast field

covers a broad range of topics in diverse legal settings, such as state

bottle-return laws in the United States, regulatory standards for

emissions from coal-fired power plants in Germany, initiatives in

China to create a “Green Great Wall”—a shelter belt of trees—to

protect Beijing from sandstorms, and international treaties for the

protection of biological diversity and the ozonosphere. During the late

20th century environmental law developed from a modest adjunct of

the law of public health regulations into an almost universally

recognized independent field protecting both human health and

nonhuman nature.

Throughout history national governments have passed occasional

laws to protect human health from environmental contamination.

About AD 80 the Senate of Rome passed legislation to protect the

city’s supply of clean water for drinking and bathing. In the 14th

century England prohibited both the burning of coal in London and

the disposal of waste into waterways. In 1681 the Quaker leader of the

English colony of Pennsylvania, William Penn, ordered that one acre

of forest be preserved for every five acres cleared for settlement, and

in the following century Benjamin Franklin led various campaigns to

curtail the dumping of waste. In the 19th century, in the midst of

the Industrial Revolution, the British government passed regulations

to reduce the deleterious effects of coal burning and chemical

manufacture on public health and the environment.

Prior to the 20th century there were few international environmental

agreements. The accords that were reached focused primarily on

boundary waters, navigation, and fishing rights along shared

waterways and ignored pollution and other ecological issues. In the

early 20th century, conventions to protect commercially valuable

species were reached, including the Convention for the Protection of

Birds Useful to Agriculture (1902), signed by 12 European

governments; the Convention for the Preservation and Protection of

Fur Seals (1911), concluded by the United States, Japan, Russia, and

the United Kingdom; and the Convention for the Protection of

Migratory Birds (1916), adopted by the United States and the United

Kingdom (on behalf of Canada) and later extended to Mexico in

1936. In the 1930s Belgium, Egypt, Italy, Portugal, South Africa,

Sudan, and the United Kingdom adopted the Convention Relative to

the Preservation of Fauna and Flora in their Natural State, which

committed those countries to preserve natural fauna and flora in

Africa by means of national parks and reserves. Spain and France

signed the convention but never ratified it, and Tanzania formally

adopted it in 1962. India, which acceded to the agreement in 1939,

was subject to the sections of the document prohibiting “trophies”

made from any animal mentioned in the annex.

Much environmental law also is embodied in the decisions of

international, national, and local courts. Some of it is manifested in

arbitrated decisions, such as the Trail Smelter arbitration (1941),

which enjoined the operation of a smelter located in British Columbia,

Canada, near the international border with the U.S. state of

Washington and held that “no State has the right to use or permit the

use of its territory in such a manner as to cause injury by fumes in or

to the territory of another or the properties or persons therein.” Some

environmental law also appears in the decisions of national courts.