Rules Without Law: India’s Supreme Court and the Governance of Street Dogs
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.71389/c9ms8344Keywords:
stray dogs, indian supreme court, judicial review, fundamental rights, suo motoAbstract
Between August and December 2025, the Supreme Court of India passed a series of suo motu orders seeking to fundamentally alter the manner in which street dogs in the country are governed. The most consequential of these orders mandated the permanent removal of all street dogs from public spaces into shelters, effectively displacing the framework established under the Animal Birth Control Rules 2023 (ABC Rules). Taken together, these orders are likely to have severe adverse consequences for both public health and the welfare of street dogs. They also raise significant questions about the legal status of street dogs, the statutory frameworks governing them, and the scope and limits of judicial power. In these respects, this article argues that the Supreme Court exceeded its jurisdiction by displacing the ABC Rules without declaring them unconstitutional and substituting them with its own preferred model of judicial governance. It further argues that this outcome is not an isolated instance of judicial excess, but the foreseeable consequence of a distinctive mode of constitutional adjudication in India, namely, public interest litigation, in which the adjudicatory process has been
progressively stripped of the procedural safeguards that ordinarily constrain error, arbitrariness, and judicial overreach. Finally, the article contends that street dogs are particularly vulnerable to the negative effects of this form of judicial intervention because they occupy a liminal position within Indian law, being neither recognised as rights-bearing subjects nor accorded a stable legal status capable of anchoring judicial reasoning.
