Thulasi Kaleeswaram Raj

Thulasi is a lawyer practicing at the Supreme Court of India. She works on civil and constitutional law.   She was also an Indian Equality Law Fellow at Melbourne Law School (2019) and a Visiting Fellow at the Institute on Law and Philosophy at Rutgers University, New Brunswick (2020).  She was the co-counsel for the petitioner in Joseph Shine v. Union of India (2018)  before the Indian Supreme Court in which the court held criminalizing adultery to be unconstitutional. She has been closely involved in constitutional cases relating to the equality and non-discrimination law, freedom of religion and free speech and expression, which are her primary research interests.  She was also an Equality Fellow at the Centre for Law & Policy Research, Bangalore, India. Further, she was engaged as a Digital Rights Fellow by the Centre for Communications Governance, National Law University, Delhi and worked on free speech cases including a challenge to the constitutionality of the sedition law and the permissibility of regulation of hate speech. She completed her Masters in Law in Public Law with Distinction from University College London.  Her paper titled ‘private discrimination, public service and the constitution’ is published in the Indian Law Review (2021). She has co-taught a credit course on discrimination law and theory at the National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata, India. She has contributed a book chapter titled ‘Covid-19 and the Crisis in Indian Democracy,’ in the Routledge Handbook on Law and the COVID-19 Pandemic (Joelle Grogan and Alice Donald (eds), Routledge ,2022,(forthcoming). She frequently  writes popular articles on relevant socio-legal issues.  

During her visit at Bonavero, Thulasi will research on aspects relating to discrimination law, secularism and freedom of religion in India.