Biography

Dr. Shivaraj is an Associate Professor at Jindal Global Law School (JGLS), O.P. Jindal Global University (Institution of Eminence). He holds a PhD in law from Durham University. He completed an LLM (with First Rank and a Gold Medal) from Karnataka State Law University and a BALLB from Karnataka University Dharwad. Before joining JGLS, Dr. Shivaraj worked as a tutor at the School of Law, Durham University (UK). He also worked as a Research Fellow at the National Judicial Academy of India, Bhopal, for over three years, where he designed and delivered over 20 judicial training programmes in the form of conferences, workshops, and retreats for various levels of judges from India, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh.

Dr Shivaraj’s current collaborative research explores and proposes to predict delays in Indian lower courts using Explainable Artificial Intelligence. His research further explores the potential for domain-specific language models to enhance the efficacy of legal chatbots (legal question-answering tools). Dr. Shivaraj’s PhD thesis critically analyses judicial conduct regulation regimes in India and the UK and foregrounds the implications of judicial conduct regulation regimes on judicial independence and accountability in both jurisdictions. It examines judicial independence and judicial accountability from a regulatory perspective. Publications emerging from his PhD research emphasise that judicial conduct regulation regimes should adequately emphasise all three facets of judicial independence: individual, internal, and institutional. Dr Shivaraj’s research demonstrates that the regulatory regimes in India undermine individual and internal judicial independence, whereas the regulatory regimes in the UK underemphasize internal judicial independence.

Dr. Shivaraj also has publications on the contemporary problems facing the Indian judiciary, delay and pendency in courts, judicial self-governance, independence, accountability and transparency, and alternative dispute resolution mechanisms.