Another milestone – CJI DY Chandrachud launches “Neutral Citation” for all Supreme Court judgments

Chief Justice of India (CJI) DY Chandrachud on Thursday announced that all judgments of the Supreme Court will have “neutral citations”. Announcing this as a new initiative, CJI DY Chandrachud said, “Our recent initiative is neutral citation for all judgments of the Supreme Court. So all 30,000 judgments are going to have neutral citation. First installment by January 1, 2023 Then the second tranche will be to judgments from 2014 and then finally we will go back to 1950. So all judgments will now have neutral citations.”

CJI DY Chandrachud also expressed his desire that the High Courts also follow neutral citation for their judgements. At present the High Courts of Delhi, Kerala and Madras introduce neutral citation for their judgements. The Chief Justice also discussed other initiatives like ESCR and translation of judgments in local languages. He said, “We are also translating all the judgments in all languages. We are using machine learning tools and it is being verified by the team of district judges. 2900 Supreme Court judgments have been translated so far.” Sometimes translations can be difficult. For example if we say “Leave Granted”, it can literally be translated as “Leave Granted”. That’s why the team of District Judges and Law Researchers are assisting. Supreme The court will finance all of this.”

CJI DY Chandrachud, chairing the e-committee of the Supreme Court in 2022, constituted a panel of three high court judges to prepare a framework for creating neutral citations for citing high court as well as Supreme Court judgments . Justice Rajeev Shakdher, Judge, Delhi High Court, Justice Raja Vijayaraghavan V, Judge, Kerala High Court and Justice Suraj Govind Raj, Judge, Karnataka High Court were declared as members of the committee and they are to suggest modalities and submit reports to the e-Committee asked for. Ramesh Babu, Member (Project Management), e-Committee, Supreme Court, has been declared as the convenor of the committee. Neutral citations are to ensure the same pattern of citing all the judgments of the High Court and the Supreme Court. The Delhi High Court and the Kerala High Court have recently introduced their own neutral citations.