Registered with the Registrar of Newspapers for India under R.N.I 53640/91

Vol. XXXI No. 18, January 1-15, 2022

Our Readers Write

Professor Charles Henry Alexandrowicz

Professor Charles Henry Alexandrowicz (1902-1975) was a Polish legal scholar who played a key role in the history of Madras. In 1951, the Vice-Chancellor of Madras University, Dr. Lakshmanaswami Mudaliar, invited Professor Alexandrowicz to set up a new Department of International and Constitutional Law (the Department of Legal Studies). Prof. Alexandrowicz headed the Department from 1951-61 and, during this period, started the first M.L. Programme in the country on International Law & Constitutional Law.

During the decade of the 1950’s Prof. Alexandrowicz was instrumental in creating, what has been termed, the “Madras School of Law”. He founded and edited The Indian Year Book of International Affairs. Prof. Alexandrowicz wrote extensively on international law and the need to challenge Eurocentric aspects of the history of international law. He also wrote widely on Indian constitutional developments. His collected works were published in a volume The Law of Nations in Global History edited by David Armitage and Jennifer Pitts, published by the Oxford University Press (2017). Interested readers are urged to read the detailed Preface, Introduction and chapters of the book to understand the contributions of Prof. Alexandrowicz to international, constitutional, and comparative law.
When Alliance Francaise was first inaugurated in Madras in 1953, he was its first president. He initiated the Indian Committee of Comparative Law in 1953. When he retired from the University of Madras in 1961, some of his Indian colleagues recommended him for the Nobel Peace Prize.

In June 2019, the Tamil Nadu National Law University held a Memorial Roundtable at Tiruchirappalli to celebrate the life and work of Prof. Alexandrowicz, one of the most distinguished scholars in International Law. Several distinguished legal scholars such as Professors Upendra Baxi, B.S. Chimni, Manoj K. Sinha, M. Gandhi, V.G. Hegde, Sandeep Bhat and Prabhash Ranjan participated.

Abhimanyu Singh
abhimany@jgu.edu.in

***

From the Website

2015 Redux?

(Vol. XXXI No. 15, November 16-30, 2021)

Among all the issues at large, water seems to be having great fun these days. On the one hand, we see an army of people setting up pumps to pump water from the storm water drain into the sewerage lines: on the other hand, the sewerage lines cough up the excess water onto the roads. And so a set of people with starched and ironed white shirts and black trousers have begun to spring up everywhere, bringing great ideas to the table. Then what was the purpose of constructing the storm water drains? Instead of draining rainwater like the layman expected, it seems to have drained the coffers of the GCC. But one thing has been made very clear – the pumped water seems to be traveling in circles; it moves from one locality into another before returning to the original locality thanks to gravity! This job seems to be endless.

S. Pinglay

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