Menaka Guruswamy

Dr. Menaka Guruswamy is a Senior Advocate at the Supreme Court of India and of the key forces behind the revocation of section 377. She has been listed in Foreign Policy magazine’s “100 most influential Global Thinkers” (2019) and on Times Magazine’s “100 most influential people” (2019). And has been published in the New York Times, the New York Review of Books, the American Journal of International Law, and the Indian Express. She writes a fortnightly column “Opening Argument” in the Indian Express, a leading Indian newspaper.

Through her constitutional litigation practice, Dr. Guruswamy has successfully sought reform of the bureaucracy in the country through fixed tenure (TSR Subramanian v Union of India), defended central government legislation that mandates that all private schools admit disadvantaged children (Right to Education case), and overturned section 377 of the Indian Penal Code that criminalised same-sex relations (Navtej Singh Johar v Union of India). In her private law practice, Guruswamy has a broad practice in the areas of commercial law and criminal law (especially white-collar cases). She has successfully appeared and advised on multiple cases of alleged infractions of money laundering and corruption laws in India. These include the Augusta Westland helicopters case that involved alleged corrupt practices in procurement, where she represented the prime accused. She acts as lead counsel in high-value commercial cases, where she represents large multinational entities and public sector companies. Guruswamy also acts as an Indian law expert in courts outside India, including most recently in the Devas v. Air India case.

Dr. Guruswamy has a Doctorate in Law (D.Phil) from Oxford University, a Masters in Law (LL.M) from Harvard Law School and a basic law degree from the National Law School of India, Bangalore. She was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford and a Gammon Fellow at Harvard Law. She has been visiting faculty at Yale Law School, New York University School of Law and University of Toronto Faculty of Law. She was the B.R Ambedkar Research Scholar and Lecturer in Law at Columbia Law School, New York from 2017-2019.