Amrita Sinha

The Judgment Note

A one-page template for reading an Indian judgment. Free to print, copy and use.

Download the A4 sheet Print from this page Read the method

The download is A4 and ready to print. If you print from this page instead, set the paper size to A4 and the scale to 100%.

American law schools teach a four-part brief: the facts, the procedural history, the holding and the rationale. It is a good structure and it was built for a different court system. This template keeps that spine and adds the things an Indian judgment actually requires: the neutral citation, the Bench strength, whether leave was granted, a paragraph pinpoint for the holding, an explicit split between what binds and what does not, and a line for how later Benches have treated the case.

The two boxes that matter most are the ones people leave blank. What is against you is the reason you will not be ambushed. Still good law is the reason you will not cite something that has been overruled.

Print this page and you will get the template alone, without any of the surrounding text. One judgment per sheet.

Judgment Note

One judgment per sheet. Leave nothing blank; write “none” if there is none.

Case name
Neutral citation e.g. 2004 INSC 569
Court & date
Bench: names and strength strength decides what it could overrule
Leave granted? an SLP dismissed without leave is not a precedent
Procedural history what happened below, and who came here
The question the Court framed in your own words, not the headnote's
Material facts only the facts the outcome turned on. Remove one: does the result change?
Holding  ·  paragraph number if you cannot give a paragraph, you have not finished reading
Because the reasoning in one sentence
Ratio: what binds remove it and the outcome falls
Obiter: useful, not binding call it an observation
Separate opinions  ·  where the majority lies on each issue
What in it is against me the sentence beginning “we make it clear that” usually narrows something
Still good law?

□ followed   □ distinguished   □ doubted   □ referred to a larger Bench   □ overruled
□ any argument that it is per incuriam  ·  □ any point decided sub silentio

In one sentence, aloud, without notes

The Judgment Note · downloaded from amritasinha.in/tools/judgment-note

How to use it

Fill it in the order the boxes appear, but read the judgment out of order: the cause title block, then the last few paragraphs to learn the outcome, then the question framed, then the facts, then the reasoning. The method is set out in full in How to Read a Judgment.

The single most useful discipline on this sheet is the paragraph number beside the holding. A citation without a pinpoint tells a judge you did not read the case. A citation with one tells them exactly where to look, and it is the only way anybody can check you.

Copying and sharing

This template is free to use. Fill one in for each judgment you read and keep it as a handy reference for your next hearing. Print it, photocopy it, share the file, give it to a first-year class, upload it wherever your colleagues will find it. You do not need to ask me and you do not owe me anything.

The one thing I ask is that you leave the line at the foot of the sheet, so that anyone who is handed a copy can find where it came from.

This is a deliberate exception. The rest of the site is reserved in the ordinary way; this page and the sheet are not.