This article has been written by Sharanya Ghosh of Symbiosis Law School, NOIDA exploring the history of Law Reporting in India.
Table of Contents
Introduction
There are more than 300 law reports published in India today. In the pre-British rule, there were none. What is law reporting? And how did it become so relevant in modern times? This article highlights the history of law reporting in India as well as its presence and relevance in the contemporary legal world.
Law reporting
The concept of law reporting is one passed onto us by the Englishmen. Stare decisis is a common law principle that dictates that an existing precedent must be followed. In other words, something that has already been established, shall not be changed or disturbed. Of course, this does not mean that new precedents cannot be set.
Law reporting developed with the objective of providing information regarding new precedents set in cases to law officials of various posts. Essentially, these publications highlight the establishment of new precedents which may aid in supporting other cases with similar facts.
History
The law of India was not codified as it is today before the advent of the British rule. There were principles that existed in society and concepts such as that of Dharma that governed over the people. The British rule, however, brought with it British laws and as the English developed laws in their own land, they were passed down to the Indian subcontinent.
The East India Company systematically introduced the English laws including principles such as stare decisis and obiter dicta into the Indian judicial system.
Law reporting had not taken any particular shape until some individuals began publishing their own reports to outline the principles and precedents of cases around 1824. Previously, there were some attempts to record important court decisions but these were irregularly done, leaving gaps during which any number of important judgements may have been lost. The reporting was essentially done by private entities and they often created special reports revolving around a particular set of laws, such as Hindu law or Muslim law instead of precedents across courts.
It was the First Law Commission that suggested the proper codification of the decisions that had been taken by the Sadar Diwani Adalats following which seven volumes of cases from 1791 to 1849 were compiled in Calcutta. In 1825, two volumes of the Bombay Sadar Diwani Adalat cases were compiled, and five volumes of cases from the Nizamat Adalat in Calcutta were compiled revolving around criminal matters.
By the 1800s, High Courts had been set up in Bombay, Madras, Calcutta and other establishments. They were empowered by the Indian High Courts Act, 1861 which gave their judgements the required validation or recognition to be set as precedents. Following this, several reports were compiled ranging from eight to 15 law report volumes per High Court. Private publications such as Madras Jurist among others also came into existence around this time.
The Indian Law Reports Act, 1875
The Indian Law Reports Act, 1875 was brought into existence with the idea of curbing the ever-growing number of private law reports publishers. Several private law reporters had begun accumulating cases and case notes and were selling them in bulk.
The issue here was that the idea behind law reporting is reporting new precedents and not simply putting together a huge number of cases. Moreover, only a few of the reports were genuine and contained compilations of important cases.
The Act, however, was not able to fulfil its purpose and was in fact criticised by many. This is because the Act simply stated that no High Court shall be obligated to follow such case precedents cited by any report other than the ones published under the authority of the Governor-General-in-Council.
The purpose behind the Act was simple and perhaps even achievable at that point in time; reducing the number of reports and improving their quality. However, the Act failed to make any change whatsoever. It was only applicable to the High Courts and did not mention the matters of the Privy Council or the Federal Court or the Supreme Court.
Private non-official law reports continued to be published and still exist even today. In fact, they are often preferred over official publications. The Law Commission at present has suggested that the Law Reports Act be repealed so that any report can serve the basic needs of the legal world.
Form and types
On the basis of length and language:
1. Full-Text Law Reports
These reports incorporate the entire judgement that has been given by the court along with a headnote which includes the summary of the judgement. These reports are often cited in preference to summary reports.
2. Summary Reports
Summary reports are those law reports which only include the summary of the case as seen in case digests. These are also comparatively less formal as compared to the full-text reports.
Reports may also be classified on the basis of whether they are official or privately published:
1. Official Reports
Official reports are those which are published by the authorities. They are not very popular even today, since they are updated slowly and often quite expensive. One such official law report in India is Indian Law Reports.
2. Non-Official Reports
These are privately published law reports. These days, non-official reports are often favoured over official reports due to the speedy publication. However, since they are privately published, they may charge a high fee for providing their services. Moreover, non-official reports tend to be repetitive, i.e., they may undermine the purpose of a law report which is to provide information on new precedents.
On the basis of geographical context:
1. All India Reports
These reports, official or non-official, accumulate and publish precedents from across states. Such reports will contain precedents set in the Supreme Court, High of Madras or High Court of Maharashtra and so on. All India Reporter is an example of a non-official all India report while Indian Law Reports would be an example of an official law report.
2. State Specific Reports
These reports are confined to a particular state. They publish precedents set only in the assigned state, such as the Allahabad Weekly Reporter (non-official) or ILR Patna (official).
There are also certain Special Law Reports which are published keeping in mind a particular legal field or aspect. These Law Reports accumulate information regarding one particular issue or field, such as labour law or company law and publish new precedents established in these fields alone. Examples of this would be Income Tax Reports or Labour Law Journal.
Technological Advancement
Several Legal Databases have popped up such as Manupatra, LexisNexis and a few others which act as search engines related to anything and everything in the legal world. In these, a person has access to case notes, entire judgements, legal dictionaries – all at the click of a button. These databases, being on the Internet, can be accessed at any time and the information available on them is never-ending. Reports published by private organisations are also accessible through these databases and they are quite helpful.
The only drawbacks here would be that access to these databases is not free and they are quite exhaustive. In other words, they can be quite confusing to navigate unless one is experienced with using these databases.
Technology not only helps us to store away the information in a part of the virtual world but also to report on matters immediately and at a lower cost. This means that information that would take months to publish can now be found published within a week or a few days. Making notes, storing important cases, and many other benefits have been brought about by technology. Reporting on the Internet in the most recent times has been seen on applications such as Bar and Bench or on databases as mentioned above.
However, Law Reporting is strictly related to reporting precedents in law. “Bar and Bench” provide all legal news to the world, the legal databases provide various services in the form of search engines. Law Reporting as a separate process is often lost in the volume of the other information available on these platforms. This is why it is essential that separate platforms be created only for law reporting.
The Present Scenario and Need for Reforms
Law Reporting has come a long way in India. Over the past few decades, there have also been attempts to infuse technology and the Internet to report on legal advancements. However, there is much that can still be done to improve the existing reporting methods. The official law reports, unfortunately, have not been able to deliver efficiently. Moreover, law reporting journals can be quite expensive for an individual.
The Internet and technology today have improved to an extent that any new precedents set can be reported within the same day. Of course, detailed reports take time to research and develop. However, the gist here is that law reporting can be made much more efficient and perhaps, also appeal to a wider audience if it was accessible by more people.
It has become necessary that precedents and advancements be reported on immediately. Unfortunately, law reports are not accessible to all since they are quite expensive.
Some possible reforms are suggested below:
Creating an Official Online Portal
Creating an online portal by official authorities that report legal news and precedents in a stipulated time period and a full report on a weekly basis to highlight essential facts or cases is one way of improving the legal reporting scenario. This will not only provide an official platform that can be controlled by the authorities but also protect consumers of such reporting to avoid falling prey to the high rates charged by the private reporters.
Moreover, a lower charge for purchasing a subscription will also attract individuals and organisations to official reports and indirectly discourage them from going for the unofficial reports. It is not that unofficial reports are unreliable but they are bulky and often repetitive since private publishers would be able to charge higher prices. This is not anything new and has been in existence since the first private reports were published under British rule. Thus, the essential reporting which brings a change in legal provisions or which establishes precedents should be reported by an official channel, preferably on the Internet as an immediate publication and perhaps in hard-copy for those who require it.
Price Ceiling
One major issue when it comes to privately published non-official reports is that they can set high rates for subscribing to or purchasing the report. This can make such reports inaccessible to a lot of groups, such as students, individual legal issues bloggers as well as some lawyers and other persons. In a few cases, it is possible that a university may subscribe to legal databases for all the students which can help them access law reports as well. However, law reports are quite costly which either dissuades people from buying them or creates a dent in their pockets.
The idea behind law reporting is to provide new information with regard to precedents. However, these days, they have become limited to few because of their high rates. A subsidised rate or a rate set by the authorities that acts as a price ceiling may help in controlling such a situation.
This will help students and other organisations to be able to access the reports and study the patterns and changes in the legal world.
Excessive Number of Reports
Another issue with privately published law reports or even databases is that all of them provide more or less the same information but may also express certain different aspects covered in their reports. Also, in organisations such as law schools or even at an individual level, a lawyer is expected to be equipped enough to be able to navigate through these reports and databases efficiently. Due to this, a number of times, people may have to subscribe to more than one report in order to understand the full picture. The more the number of law reports that one subscribes to, the more repetitive material is generated and the costlier it is for a person. One way to erase would be the setting up of an official platform. Since most of these reporting platforms are private, it will not be easy to simply shut them down. However, an official source may be able to provide all the information in one place. That is perhaps one of the only ways to curb this issue.
There is not much that can be done to change the law reporting in the short term. However, long term plans may be able to improve the quality of law reporting in India.
Conclusion
Law Reporting in India is not a new concept. However, due to the sheer number of reports created, it may seem that the overall quality of reporting may go down since there is a lot of repetition. However, today the coexistence of official and non-official reports has come to be seen as a healthy competition instead of a limitation. The quality of reporting has also risen. Law Reporting definitely has come a long way and can be expected to improve more as the years pass by.
References
- http://www.allahabadhighcourt.in/event/HistoryOfLawReportingInIndiaJKMittal.pdf
- https://www.jstor.org/stable/43952222?read-now=1&seq=2#metadata_info_tab_contents
- https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4147&context=penn_law_review
- https://www.iclr.co.uk/knowledge/case-law/what-is-a-law-report/
- http://www.legalserviceindia.com/legal/article-1701-history-of-law-reporting-in-india-an-overview.html
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