Citizenship, Health Care Jurisprudence and Pursuit of Health Justice

Pinto, Edward Premdas

This chapter discusses the interrelationship between citizenship, health care jurisprudence and health justice. The socio-political processes that shaped the access to justice as a fundamental right making it an integral part of the ‘right to life’ (personhood) jurisprudence paved the path to reconceptualise the SRHC not merely as access to services, but also as a matter of social justice and fundamental right to life, a process of claiming citizenship in the pursuit of health justice. In India, courts have been accessed either as a last resort of justice or as a ‘strategic instrument’ to claim citizens’ power vis-à -vis the State or medical profession. Health care jurisprudence, i.e. the body of judicial-legal principles emerging from the judgments of Supreme Court of India (SCI) in health care litigations, attains significance due to the power it enjoys as the domestic law or policy, in accordance with the common-law tradition. Engaging judicial power in health and health care, and the emerging health care jurisprudence symbolises the role and power of the courts in actualising citizenship especially in the matters of social rights.