'Neutral Citation' system to be launched for Supreme Court judgments

Tags: National National News

Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud on February 23 announced that the Supreme Court will adopt a “neutral citation system” for its judgments.

An overview of the news

• The Chief Justice hoped that the High Courts would also follow the neutral citation for their judgements.

• The Delhi, Kerala and Madras High Courts have already introduced neutral citations.

What is a “citation”?

• The citation of a case is essentially an identification tag for the decision.

• Typically, this will include a reference number, the year of the decision, the name of the court that issued the decision, and shorthand for the journal that published the decision.

What is a neutral citation?

• A neutral citation would mean that the court would provide its own citation, separate from that provided by traditional law reporters.

• Law reporters are periodicals or annual digests that publish judgments.

Why is implementation of the neutral citation system required?

• Steps have been taken to introduce and implement a uniform, reliable and secure methodology for identifying and citing Supreme Court judgments.

• The Court is using machine learning tools to translate its judgments from English to local languages.

• 2,900 judgments of the Supreme Court have been translated so far.

• It has also asked district courts to examine machine learning translations of judgments.

• About 30,000 judgments will have neutral citations.