This excerpt from The Constitution Is My Home features senior advocate Indira Jaising reflecting on her journey in law and her commitment to representing marginalised groups, particularly working women.She explains that, as a first-generation woman lawyer without role models, she had the freedom to shape her legal career independently.

At a time when the Indian legal profession was dominated by commercial practice and lacked institutional support for public-interest litigation, Jaising chose to focus on social and economic rights.

She highlights how earlier generations of lawyers largely concentrated on property rights, with little attention to women’s issues or the struggles of marginalised communities.Even when women appeared in litigation, they were often proxies for male family interests.

Jaising’s work, including her involvement in founding the Lawyers’ Collective, sought to make legal services accessible to those excluded from the system.

Her experiences exposed her to the harsh realities of litigation, including delays, lack of legal aid, and judicial reluctance to challenge state authority.

She recounts a deeply personal moment involving an air hostess she represented, whose death during ongoing litigation underscored the emotional and systemic toll of the legal process.Jaising also critiques the traditional expectation that lawyers remain detached from their clients.She questions the rigid application of the “cab rank rule”, arguing instead for the freedom to choose cases aligned with one’s values.Her work on behalf of pavement dwellers exemplifies her effort to expand legal thinking around rights and dignity.

Discussing “democratic lawyering”, she argues that courts should serve as spaces not only for defending rights but also for advancing social and economic justice.She points out that even left-leaning legal traditions in India historically focused more on civil liberties than on broader socio-economic rights.For Jaising, democratic lawyering bridges this gap, using the Constitution proactively to shape a more equitable society.