Earlier Judgments Were Cited By Mentioning The Name Of Author Judge, Now It Has Changed : CJI DY Chandrachud

Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud on Thursday, while dealing with a matter pertaining to insurance, highlighted that there had been a "marked departure" in the way precedents were cited in judgements. He stated that while earlier it was common for judges to refer to cases by naming the judge who had authored the judgement, it was no longer the case now. Now cases are cited by their causetitle.

The courtroom exchange took place when a counsel appearing before the CJI noted that he was quite surprised to see that the division bench had named the judge who had authored a precedent in its order. To this, CJI Chandrachud remarked–

"Actually, I have also noticed that in the older judgements– 1950s and all, in the Letters Patent Appeal, they used to always say that the appeal arises from a judgement of Justice JC Shah. Later on there has been a marked departure. Now we do not refer to the name of the judge."

The counsel stated that this could be a reason why senior lawyers remembered judgements by the judges' names and not just by the name of the case. CJI DY Chandrachud also said–

"In fact, I must tell you on a very lighter vein, I was very impressed by the judgement of a single judge. I mentioned the name of the judge in one of my judgements. Then my colleague returned the judgement otherwise agreeing with it, but my colleague put a little note asking should we mention the name of the judge. So this time it was of course in a laudatory way but then I deleted it. Now the trend has changed, we don't name the judge. The earlier judgements, you would see that Justice MC Chagla etc would always refer to the name of the judge but no longer..."

The counsel also remarked that writing the name of the judge was a very personalised way of referring to judgements.