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India Legal Research Guide: Part II : Case Law

This guide is designed to be used in conjunction with the AAL Program: Research the Law in India

Supreme Court Cases and High Court Cases

Indian court cases are often reported in multiple reporters.

The Official reporter for Supreme Court Decisions is the Supreme Court Reports (SCR). 

The Bluebook (Table 2-18) lists Supreme Court Reports (SCR) as the preferred reporter for citation (and also lists citation rules for other reporters and primary legal materials).

SCR is available as a print series, and is also available freely online via the website of the Supreme Court of India

SCR is currently several years behind in publication. As such, there are a number of commercially published reporters which are acceptable for citation in Indian Courts. Two prominent commercial reporters are: 1)All India Reporter (AIR), which has sets for both Supreme Courts and the High Courts, and 2) Supreme Court Cases (SCC).

Several law reports that published High Court decisions included the India Law Reports (I.L.R.), which is irregular in publication.  High Court cases are also published in state law reporter, such as the Bombay Law Reporter (Bom. L.R.), Calcutta Weekly Notes (C.W.N), Karnataka Law Journals, Delhi Reported Judgments (D.R.J.), to name a few. For a complete listing of law reports, see this listing from the Delhi High Court.  

As noted above, cases are generally published in multiple reporters. The Equivalent Citation Table, published by the Supreme Court of India, can help a research not only make sense of the various case names, but to determine parallel citations when needed.

 

 

 

Other Open Access Online Resources