Abstract
The Indian Supreme Court is considered one of the most powerful courts in the world. At a little over 70 years old, the Court has achieved a strong reputation as being one of the most activist courts in the world. At the same time, academic writing, especially law reviews, has exponentially grown in India and established its impact on the law. A question that has emerged is whether academic writing is losing touch with the practice of law. Some commentators have attributed the apparent decline in the courts’ use of legal scholarship to the increasingly theoretical and impractical nature of law review articles, which adds little value from the perspective of the general legal profession. We try to examine this claim in the Indian context, where no study has been carried out concerning the use of legal scholarship by the Indian Supreme Court.
This study analyses the use of law review articles by the Supreme Court over seven decades since the Court was established. The ‘content analysis’ technique is adopted to conduct the study, which detects that the Supreme Court has only cited law review articles 366 times in its judgements between 1950-2020. The paper goes on to undertake a detailed analysis of factors revolving around the same. We argue that despite the low number of citations of law reviews in Supreme Court judgements, claims regarding the decline of the use of legal scholarship may not necessarily be valid in the Indian context. Overall, the study provides a unique insight into when, why, and how the Indian Supreme Court involves legal scholarship in cases.
Recommended Citation
Garg, Varun and Singhi, Apurva
(2024)
"An Empirical Assessment of the Indian Supreme Court’s Use of Law Review Articles (1950-2020),"
National Law School of India Review: Vol. 35:
Iss.
1, Article 4.
DOI: 10.55496/DUJM5745
Available at:
https://repository.nls.ac.in/nlsir/vol35/iss1/4
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
10.55496/DUJM5745
