Explainer: Why Supreme Court threw out Basic structure doctrine in BBI case

Supreme Court Judges during the reading of the BBI verdict at the Supreme court building on March 31, 2022. [Collins Kweyu, Standard]

When Kenya’s Supreme Court said that the basic structure doctrine is not part of Kenya’s constitutional culture and therefore the 2010 Constitution will not be interpreted through that lens, it entered the list of countries that have subscribed to an idea that was mooted in Germany and conceived in India. 

Kenya found herself in the list of history of countries knotted with eternity structure doctrine; amendable and non-amendable clauses clamour. 

She has now joined South Africa and Tanzania in rejecting a reasoning by German thinker Dieter Conrad who transferred it to India.