Chief Justice DY Chandrachud Announces ‘Neutral Citation’ For Supreme Court Judgments

New Delhi, 23rd February 2023: Chief Justice of India (CJI) DY Chandrachud on Thursday announced that all judgments of the Supreme Court will have ‘neutral citations’. The apex court had earlier stated that steps have been taken for the introduction and implementation of a uniform, reliable and secure methodology for identifying and citing judgments in the apex court, i.e., to ensure a uniform pattern of apex court judgements. A Neutral Quotation System has been introduced.

The announcement was made by Justice Chandrachud when a bench headed by DY Chandrachud assembled to hear the mention of matters for urgent listing on Thursday. He said, “We have launched neutral quotations. All judgments of this Court shall contain neutral citations. Around 30,000 judgments of the apex court will have neutral citations.” He said that it is expected that the High Courts will also follow this.

Justice Chandrachud said the apex court is also using machine learning tools, which will translate its judgments from English to Indian languages. The CJI said, “So far, 2,900 judgments have been translated into Hindi.” He said that sometimes it can be difficult to translate using technology. Citing an example, he said that if a judge in the apex court says “leave granted”, it can be translated in Hindi as ‘leave granted’.

The CJI said there is a team of district judges and law researchers to assist in the process of examining the translated versions of the judgements. The CJI also talked about the Electronic Supreme Court Reports (e-SCR) project, which aims to provide free access to around 34,000 judgments to lawyers, law students and the general public.

On January 2 this year, Justice Chandrachud announced the launch of the e-SCR project. He had said that the apex court would also introduce neutral citations. Also, he pointed out that it is already going on in the Delhi and Kerala High Courts. The CJI had said that a committee consisting of three judges of high courts has been constituted to work out the procedure for neutral citations.

Many times it is observed that lawyers while arguing in the courts support their cases by citing various law journals including ‘Supreme Court Reports’. The e-SCR project is an initiative to provide a digital version of the apex court’s judgments in that manner.

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