Burdening the burdened: A constitutional scrutiny of reverse onus clauses

The roots of the principle can be traced to the English law. It is also an international human right under the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The ‘golden thread’ which binds all of the criminal law, as per Woolmington v DPP, was enshrined in the principle of presumption of innocence. The reverse onus theory, however, is an antagonism of sorts to this very golden thread.