Soli J Sorabjee

Former Attorney General of India

Soli Jehangir Sorabjee is among those few jurists endowed with great qualities of head and heart, who played many parts and was considered a legend. He was one of the all-time greats both as a lawyer and a man.

In 1971, he was designated as a senior advocate of the Bombay High Court. He served as Solicitor-General of India from 1977 to 1980. He served as Attorney-General for India from 1989 to 1990 and once again from 1998 to 2004. He was the only person to have held the office of the Attorney General of India for two terms.

He was a renowned human rights lawyer. He was appointed by the UN as a Special Rapporteur for Nigeria, in 1997, to report on the human rights situation in that country. Following this, he becomes a member and later Chairman of the UN-Sub Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, from 1998 to 2004.

He was a champion of freedom of speech and expression. He defended freedom of the press in many landmark cases in the Supreme Court of India and has been instrumental in revoking censorship orders and bans on publications.

For about 60 years Sorabjee helped in building brick-by-brick the edifice of India’s constitutional law and the administrative law.