Ayan Gupta
Ayan Gupta is a DPhil Candidate in Law at New College, University of Oxford. His research examines life imprisonment without parole in India, exploring the limits of the state’s authority to punish and the epistemic and moral questions surrounding permanent forms of punishment.
- What is the title of your research, and what is it about?
My DPhil project is titled "The Rise of Life Imprisonment without Remission in India: A Search for the Limits of Punishment." The project examines the limits of the state's authority to punish by hoping to build on the growing literature within the political turn in criminal law theory. I aim to understand how the nature of the state's authority to punish shapes which penal practices the state can legitimately employ. I examine Life Imprisonment without Parole (LWOP) in India as a case study. I posit two reasons why the penalty may not be a legitimate exercise of the state's authority to punish. First, it may be problematic because judges lack the requisite capacity to make strong epistemic decisions about the rest of a person's life at sentencing. Second, it may be problematic because it permanently excludes a person from the very community in whose name the state seeks to punish. In exploring these two contentions, I aim to understand the role that epistemic and moral fallibility, and notions of community membership or citizenship, play in determining the limits of the state's authority to punish.
- Who is your supervisor?
My supervisors are Professor(s) Carolyn Hoyle and Lucia Zedner. They are incredibly supportive and wonderful and have made the DPhil journey super enjoyable.
- How did you come up with your research topic?
I was initially interested in understanding why LWOP serves as an acceptable alternative to the death penalty. In the early days of the DPhil, I focused on this question and on understanding the range of constitutional and legal doctrines in India that might help assess the legitimacy of LWOP. I soon realised the problem is deeper; to develop sound legal doctrine which critically assesses LWOP, we need a robust account of the limits of the state's authority to punish. This realisation led me to the project in its current form, which aims to use LWOP as a case study to think about what these limits might look like in liberal constitutional democracies.
- Why did you choose Oxford to undertake research in Criminal Law?
I did the BCL at Oxford before the DPhil and fell in love with the city and the Law Faculty's vibrant intellectual environment. The Law Faculty offers the opportunity to learn from some of the best legal scholars in the world, and with Carolyn and Lucia graciously agreeing to supervise my project, I saw no reason not to continue my time in Oxford. The generous funding provided by the Rhodes Trust made it possible for me to pursue the BCL and the DPhil without having to worry about financing the degree myself, which was a crucial factor in choosing to stay at Oxford too.
- How do you hope your research will contribute to law and society?
My hope is that my research will help us better understand why some methods of punishment, such as LWOP, might not be permissible. The focus of punishment philosophy has often (not always) been on the justification of punishment. However, it is equally important to have a robust account of other issues within penal ethics, such as which ways of punishing are permissible, what fair sentencing procedures should look like, and how prisons should be designed. By trying to articulate limits of the state's authority to punish by drawing on political theory and actual practice of punishment, I hope to move closer to some of these concerns within penal ethics.