Dr. Mrinal Satish

Education

B.A. LL.B (Hons.), National Law School of India University – 2001
LL.M, National Law School of India University
LL.M, Yale Law School
JSD, Yale Law School

Profile

Prof. Mrinal Satish’s area of interest and specialization is criminal law. His research interests include sentencing, gender and the law, medical jurisprudence, empirical analysis of law, reproductive justice, excessive undertrial and pre-trial detention, and studying the impact of the criminal justice system in its interface with vulnerable and disempowered groups.

Mrinal’s doctoral dissertation at Yale Law School examined sentencing policy and practice, with a special focus on rape sentencing in India. He was awarded the Inlaks scholarship (2006) for pursuing his LL.M degree at Yale Law School. He was also awarded the Madhu Bhasin Noble Student Award (2001) and the Mahatma Gandhi National Law Teaching Fellowship (2002) by NLSIU.

Mrinal is a member of the National Legal Services Authority (NALSA). He was a member of the Supreme Court of India’s Gender Sensitization and Internal Complaints Committee (GSICC) from 2017 to 2021 as a nominee of the Chief Justice of India.  He was also a nominated member of the Delhi High Court Legal Services Committee (2018-2020).  He is an articles editor of the Indian Law Review (Taylor & Francis, UK).

Work Experience

Mrinal is the former Chairperson of the Delhi Judicial Academy. He has also been a Professor of Law at the National Law University, Delhi, where he was the Executive Director of the Centre for Constitutional Law, Policy, and Governance (2014-2018). He was an Assistant Professor at the National Judicial Academy, Bhopal. He has had two prior stints as a faculty member at NLSIU (2002-2006, and 2009-10).

Mrinal has been involved in various law reform initiatives. He was part of the research team that assisted the Justice Verma Committee (2013) on amendments to rape laws. He assisted the Twentieth Law Commission of India on multiple projects involving criminal law. He was part of the sub-committee appointed by the Law Commission to draft the 262nd Report of the Commission on the “Death Penalty.” He was invited in July 2017 to make a presentation to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Health & Family Welfare on the Surrogacy (Regulation) Bill, 2016.

Mrinal has been appointed as an amicus curiae by the Delhi High Court in a number of cases. In Mithlesh Kushwaha v. State, which was a death sentence matter, he was asked to assist the court on the issue of sentence, and on the role and responsibilities of a probation officer in preparing a pre-sentence report. The Court, in its judgment, acknowledged his assistance in the matter (https://indiankanoon.org/doc/196223908/).

Mrinal also provided assistance to the Delhi High Court in a matter involving conditions in the Women’s Prison in the Tihar Prisons Complex, New Delhi. The High Court in this case – High Court on its Own Motion v. State of Delhi – has issued orders based on the recommendations made by him. In November 2017, Mrinal was appointed by the Delhi High Court as member of a three-member fact-finding enquiry committee to enquire into an incident of custodial violence in Tihar Jail.

Research and Other Activities

• Study on preventive detention in Karnataka, and pre-trial criminal justice processes (supported by the Thakur Family Foundation).
• Study on the working of the Vulnerable Witness Deposition Complexes in Delhi (under the aegis of the Vulnerable Witness Committee of the High Court of Delhi)
• Research Projects on issues of sexual and reproductive health rights (Center for Reproductive Rights, New York & Centre for Constitutional Law, Policy, and Governance (CLPG), NLU Delhi).
• Women in Detention (Research Project for the Ministry of Women and Child Development undertaken by CLPG, NLU Delhi.
• Prison Advocacy Projects – Studying cases of undertrial prisoners and convicts in Tihar Prisons, New Delhi (Project under the aegis of the Delhi High Court Legal Services Committee, undertaken by CLPG, NLU Delhi)
• E-Justice: Building Courts of Tomorrow (Project under the aegis of the Government of Madhya Pradesh and the office of the Advisor to the Prime Minister of India)
• Part of Research Team of the Justice Verma Committee on Amendments to Criminal Laws (2013)

Publications

Books

• Mrinal Satish, Discretion, Discrimination and the Rule of Law: Reforming Rape Sentencing in India (Cambridge University Press, 2016)
• Aparna Chandra, Mrinal Satish & Center for Reproductive Rights, Securing Reproductive Justice in India: A Casebook (Center for Reproductive Rights & Centre for Constitutional Law, Policy and Governance, NLU Delhi, 2019)
• Mrinal Satish & Maja Daruwala(eds.), Fair Trial Manual for Judges & Magistrates (Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, 2019, 2^nd)
• Aparna Chandra, Mrinal Satish et.al., Prisoners’ Rights Manual (Human Rights Law Network, 2016 -In Two Volumes)

Book Chapters, Modules & Monographs

• Mrinal Satish, Plea Bargaining in India, in Research Handbook on Plea Bargaining and Criminal Justice (Maximo Langer, Mike McConville, Luke Marsh eds., Edward Elgar Publishing, 2024).
• Mrinal Satish, Religious Penal Clauses in India, in Religious Offences in Common Law Asia: Colonial Legacies, Constitutional Rights and Contemporary Practices (Li-Ann Thio& Jaclyn L Neo, eds., Hart Publishing, 2021)
• Aparna Chandra, Mrinal Satish, Shreya Shree & Mini Saxena, Legal Barriers to Accessing Safe Abortion Service: A Fact Finding Study (National Law School of India University, Bengaluru, 2021)
• Aparna Chandra & Mrinal Satish, Criminal Law and the Constitution, in The Oxford Handbook of the Indian Constitution (Sujit Choudhry, Madhav Khosla & Pratap Bhanu Mehta eds., Oxford University Press, 2016)
• Gitanjali Prasad & Mrinal Satish, Exclusion from Access to Legal Justice, in The India Exclusion Report 2016 (Yoda Press, 2017)
• Mrinal Satish, Decriminalizing Homosexuality: A Review of the Naz Foundation Judgment of the Delhi High Court, in Gay Subcultures and Literature: The Indian Projections (Sukhbir Singh, ed., Indian Institute of Advanced Sciences, 2014)
• Mrinal Satish, The Role of the Victim in the Indian Criminal Justice System, in Support For Victims of Crime in Asia, (Chan Wing Cheong ed., Routledge, 2007)
• Mrinal Satish, Jurisdictional Powers of International Criminal Tribunals: From Nuremberg to Rome and Beyond, in International Criminal Jurisprudence: Issues and Challenges (R.K. Dixit et.al., eds., 2009, Hope India Publications)

Articles

• Mrinal Satish, Z v. State of Bihar: Reproductive Autonomy and State Liability, Journal of Victimology and Victim Justice, 3:1, 128-137 (2020)
• Mrinal Satish, The Farooqui Judgment’s Interpretation of Consent Ignores Decades of Rape-Law Reform and Catastrophically Affects Rape Adjudication, The Caravan(October 2017)
• Mrinal Satish, Laws Relating to Sexual Violence in India: Constitutional and Human Rights Dimensions, Vol. 15, Journal of the National Human Rights Commission 225-246 (2016)
• Durba Mitra & Mrinal Satish, Testing Chastity, Evidencing Rape: The Impact of Medical Jurisprudence on Rape Adjudication in India, Vol 49, No. 41, Economic and Political Weekly 51-58 (October 11, 2014)
• Mrinal Satish &Shwetasree Majumder, A Brief Synopsis of the New Offences/Procedures Recommended by the Justice Verma Committee on Amendments to Criminal Law, 1 J. NLUD 172 (2013)
• Mrinal Satish, “Bad Characters, History Sheeters, Budding Goondas and Rowdies”: Police Surveillance Files and Intelligence Databases in India, 23 (1), L. School of India Rev. 133 (2011)
• Mrinal Satish and Aparna Chandra, Of Maternal State and Minimalist Judiciary: The Indian Supreme Court’s Approach to Terror Related Adjudication, 21(1) N L. School of India Rev 51 (2009)
• Mrinal Satish and Aparna Chandra, Third Party Intervention in Criminal Litigation, (2005) 2 S.C.C. 72 (Journal)

Notable Op-Eds/Columns/Blogs 

• Anushka Pandey, Preeti Pratishrui Dash, Mrinal Satish, Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita: Decolonising or Reinforcing Colonial Ideas?, The NLS Blog, January 25, 2024. Republished in The Wire (January 30, 2024), available here.
• Mrinal Satish, Preeti Pratishruti Dash, Anushka Pandey, Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita Bill: Implications of Proposed Changes to the Indian Penal Code, The NLS Blog, December 9, 2023
• Mrinal Satish, Gender and Nation: In Defence of the Victim, Indian Express, December 19, 2017
• Mrinal Satish, Lawyers Boycotting Accused in Heinous Crimes Violate the Rights of the Victim as well, The Print, September 19, 2017
• Mrinal Satish, Marital Rape: The Government has refused to criminalise marital rape for all the wrong reasons, The Print, September 6, 2017
• Mrinal Satish, Forget the Chatter to the Contrary, the 2013 Rape law amendments are a step Forward, The Wire, August 2016 (Cited by the High Court of Jharkhand in Captain Prem Deep Anand v. State of Jharkhand, 2016 SCC OnLineJhar 2930)
• Mrinal Satish & Rukmini S., Misunderstanding Rape, Condemning Juveniles, The Hindu, August 14, 2014
• Mrinal Satish, Our Acid Test, Indian Express, August 1, 2013
• Mrinal Satish, Progressive, Regressive or Just Hype? The Judgment of the Madras High Court in Aysha v. Ozir Hassan
• Mrinal Satish, Rape is Rape, No Exceptions, Indian Express, March 21, 2013
• Mrinal Satish, Criminalising Romance, Indian Express, February 12, 2013
• Mrinal Satish, Virginity and Rape Sentencing, Times of India (Crest Edition), January 12, 2013.
• Mrinal Satish Chastity, Virginity, Marriageability, and Rape Sentencing, Law and Other Things (January 4, 2013)
• Aparna Chandra & Mrinal Satish, Misadventures of the Supreme Court in the Aruna Shanbaug case, Law and Other Things (March 13, 2011) (Cited by Justice D.Y. Chandrachud in his concurring judgment in Common Cause v. Union of India, (2018) 5 SCC 1, 216)
• Mrinal Satish, Compromise Formula in Rape Sentencing, Law and Other Things (March 11, 2011)