Added: May 14, 2010
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Description: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manmohan_Desai DIED AT THE AGE OF 57 BARBED WIRE SYMBOLIC OF INFILTRATION. Manmohan Desai (26 February 1937 - 1 March 1994) was a producer and director of Indian movies.His father, Kikubhai Desai , was an Indian film producer and owner of Paramount Studios (later Filmalaya)[1], from 1931-41. His productions, mainly stunt films, included "Circus Queen", "Golden Gang", "Sheikh Challi".[2] Manmohan Desai's older brother, Subhash Desai, became a producer in the 1950s [2] and gave Manmohan his first break with the Hindi film Chhalia (1960). Subhash later went on to produce Bluff Master, Dharam Veer, and Desh Premee with Manmohan as the director. Manmohan Desai was known for his family-centered, action-song-and-dance films which catered to the tastes of the Indian masses and through which he achieved great success. His movies defined a new genre called masala films. He had a string of hits with Amitabh Bachchan in the 70s and early 80s which helped cement Bachchan's status as a superstar of Indian Cinema. He worked with Amitabh on Amar Akbar Anthony, Parvarish, Suhaag, Naseeb, Desh Premee, Coolie, Mard and Ganga Jamuna Saraswati; all but the last were box office successes. He was one of the directors who had a special working relationship with Amitabh Bachchan, the others being Yash Chopra, Prakash Mehra, Ramesh Sippy, and Hrishikesh Mukherjee. Of these, only Yash Chopra went on to make hits beyond the 1980s. Apart from Bachchan, Manmohan Desai also worked with such leading male stars as Raj Kapoor in the 1960 film Chhalia, Shammi Kapoor in "Bluffmaster" (1963), Rajesh Khanna in Sachaa Jhutha (1970), Randhir Kapoor in Raampur Ka Lakshman (1972), Shashi Kapoor in "Aa Gale Lag Jaa" (1973), Dharmendra & Jeetendra in Dharam Veer (1977) and Rishi Kapoor in "Coolie" (1983). 1977 was an exceptional year for him. All four of his films released that year were huge hits: Parvarish, Amar Akbar Anthony, Chacha Bhatija and Dharam Veer. The first two were with Amitabh, and the latter two were with Dharmendra. Out of the 20 films that Manmohan Desai directed in his career span of 29 years (1960-1989), as many as 13 films were stupendous hits. His success ratio was 65 per cent in an industry where flops abound. Manmohan Desai was of Gujarati ancestry. His wife was Jeevanprabha Desai. She died in April 1979. He was engaged to actress Nanda from 1992 until the time of his death in 1994. He had one son Ketan Desai who is still involved in the film industry. Ketan is married to Kanchan Kapoor, daughter of Shammi Kapoor and Geeta Bali. On 1 March 1994, an ailing Manmohan Desai committed suicide at his home in Khetwadi by jumping from the building that he owned, near Grant Road, Mumbai. Very little is known about his death except that he was suffering from chronic back pain. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stare_decisis ^ Kmiec, Keenan. The Origin and Current Meanings of "Judicial Activism", California Law Review (2004): Some instances of disregarding precedent are almost universally considered inappropriate. For example, in a rare showing of unity in a Supreme Court opinion discussing judicial activism, Justice Stevens wrote that a circuit court "engaged in an indefensible brand of judicial activism" when it "refused to follow" a "controlling precedent" of the Supreme Court. The rule that lower courts should abide by controlling precedent, sometimes called "vertical precedent," can safely be called settled law. It appears to be equally well accepted that the act of disregarding vertical precedent qualifies as one kind of judicial activism. "Horizontal precedent," the doctrine requiring a court "to follow its own prior decisions in similar cases," is a more complicated and debatable matter....[A]cademics argue that it is sometimes proper to disregard horizontal precedent. Professor Gary Lawson, for example, has argued that stare decisis itself may be unconstitutional if it requires the Court to adhere to an erroneous reading of the Constitution. "If the Constitution says X and a prior judicial decision says Y, a court has not merely the power, but the obligation, to prefer the Constitution." In the same vein, Professors Ahkil Amar and Vikram Amar have stated, "Our general view is that the Rehnquist Court's articulated theory of stare decisis tends to improperly elevate judicial doctrine over the Constitution itself." It does so, they argue, "by requiring excessive deference to past decisions that themselves may have been misinterpretations of the law of the land. For Lawson, Akhil Amar, and Vikram Amar, dismissing erroneous horizontal precedent would not be judicial activism; instead, it would be appropriate constitutional decisionmaking. —Walton Myers