famous statements on the inviolate nature of the constitution. To amend or not to amend Palkhivala had a deep respect, indeed reverence, for both the Constitution of India, and for the cardinal principles he saw embedded in it: "The Constitution was meant to impart such a momentum to the living spirit of the rule of law that democracy and civil liberty may survive in India beyond our own times and in the days when our place will know us no more." Nani saw the constitution as a legacy that had to be honoured while simultaneously being flexible. Quoting Thomas Jefferson, he said, the constitution must go "hand in hand with the progress of the human mind". He was however a firm opponent of politically motivated constitutional amendments (His favourite quotation was from Joseph Story, who said: "The Constitution has been reared for immortality, if the work of man may justly aspire to such a title. It may, nevertheless, perish in an hour by the folly, or corruption, or negligence of its only keepers, the people."). The culmination of Palkhivala's success before the Supreme Court came in the famous Kesavananda Bharati vs. The State of Kerala case [AIR 1973 S.C. 1461, (1973) 4 SCC 225]: Parliament had added the Ninth Schedule to the Constitution through the very first constitutional amendment in 1951 as a means of immunizing certain laws against judicial review. Under the provisions of Article 31, which themselves were amended several times later, laws placed in the Ninth Schedule could not be challenged in a court of law on the ground that they violated the fundamental rights of citizens. The protective umbrella covered more than 250 laws passed by state legislatures with the aim of regulating the size of land holdings and abolishing various tenancy systems. The Ninth Schedule was created with the primary objective of preventing the judiciary – which upheld the citizens' right to property on several occasions – from derailing the Nehru government's agenda for land reform, but it outlived its original purpose. In the now famous ruling, on 24 April 1973, a Special Bench comprising 13 Judges of the Supreme Court of India ruled by a majority of 7–6, that Article 368 of the Constitution "does not enable Parliament to alter the basic structure or framework of the Constitution.". In the process it overruled a decision of a Special Bench of 11 Judges, by a