Law Reporting in India

Before 1875: too many reports and no rule about them

The preamble to the Act of 1875 states the problem in its own words. It was expedient to diminish the multitude and expense of the Law Reports published in British India, and to improve their quality; and with a view to those objects the Governor-General in Council proposed to authorise the publication of reports of cases decided by the High Courts of Judicature established under the twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth of Victoria, chapter 104.

Three things are in that sentence.

There were too many. Rival series of reports competed, and a case might appear in several, in different words, or in none.

They were expensive. A profession that must buy competing series pays several times for the same decisions.

And their quality varied. A report is somebody's account of what a court decided; if the reporter is careless or not a lawyer, the account is unreliable, and a court asked to follow it is being asked to follow a mistake.

The reference to 24 and 25 Victoria chapter 104 is to the Indian High Courts Act 1861, which chapters 290 and 740 of this book set out. The reports to be authorised were the reports of the new High Courts, and the series that resulted, published for each High Court, is the Indian Law Reports, cited as ILR.

There had been an attempt already the same year. Section 2 of this Act repeals Act No. II of 1875, an Act "to diminish the multitude and improve the quality of Law Reports, and to extend the area of their authority". India Code still lists both: the Act of 1875 numbered 2 of 1875, repealed by Act 18 of 1875, and the Act numbered 18 of 1875, repealed by Act 23 of 2016.

The Act, in four sections

Section 1: the Act may be called The Indian Law Reports Act, 1875; it extends to the whole of British India; and it comes into force on such day as the Governor-General in Council notifies in the Gazette of India. It received the assent of the Governor-General on 13 October 1875.

Section 2: Act No. II of 1875 is repealed.

Section 3 is the operative provision, and it should be quoted:

"No Court shall be bound to hear cited, or shall receive or treat as an authority binding on it, the report of any case decided by any of the said High Courts on or after the said day, other than a report published under the authority of the Governor General in Council."

Read it carefully, because it is more limited than it looks and the limits are the examination points.

It applies only to decisions of the High Courts established under the Act of 1861, and only to decisions given on or after the appointed day. It does not touch decisions of the Privy Council, of the courts of a State, or of any court below a High Court.

It has two limbs. A court is not bound to hear cited an unauthorised report, which is a rule about what counsel may read out; and a court shall not receive or treat as binding an unauthorised report, which is a rule about the weight of what is read.

And it is not a prohibition on publishing. Anybody might publish reports; what the section did was to deny them binding authority in court. The monopoly created was a monopoly of authority, not of the press.

Section 4 is the saving, and it is the section that stops the Act being misunderstood:

"Nothing herein contained shall be construed to give to any judicial decision any further or other authority than it would have had if this Act had not been passed."

That is a legislature being careful. Section 3 might have been read as conferring binding force on everything printed in the authorised reports. Section 4 says the opposite: the Act regulates the report, not the decision. Whether a decision binds depends on the ordinary law of precedent, on which court decided it and on what the decision was; publication in the authorised series adds nothing to it.

Those two sections together are the whole doctrine, and they are worth stating as a pair in any answer. Section 3: only an authorised report may be treated as binding. Section 4: being in an authorised report does not make a decision binding.

What the Act produced

The Indian Law Reports series, published for each High Court under the authority of the Government: ILR Bombay, ILR Calcutta, ILR Madras, ILR Allahabad and, as High Courts were established, the rest. After independence the series continued under the authority of the State Governments, and it is still published.

Alongside it grew a large body of private reporting, which section 3 never forbade: series published by private publishers, covering the High Courts, the Federal Court and later the Supreme Court, and which the profession uses constantly. The practical position for a century was that the authorised series had the statutory status and the private series had the readers.

What governs now

The Act was repealed by the Repealing and Amending Act 2016 (Act 23 of 2016), and this is where a current chapter has to depart from the textbooks. There is no longer any statute in India that tells a court which reports it must not treat as binding.

What governs is:

Article 141 of the Constitution. "The law declared by the Supreme Court shall be binding on all courts within the territory of India." Notice that the article binds courts to the law declared, not to a report of it. The report is evidence of what was declared; if it is inaccurate, the law declared is still what binds.

The rules and practice of the courts themselves. The Supreme Court publishes its own reports, and the High Courts and the Supreme Court regulate by their rules and by practice directions how decisions are to be cited before them, including the citation of judgments from the courts' own electronic records.

And the ordinary law of precedent, which is not statutory at all: that a court is bound by the ratio decidendi of a decision of a court above it, and generally by decisions of a coordinate bench, and that what binds is the reasoning necessary to the decision and not everything said in the judgment.

So the statutory chapter of this story is closed. Law reporting in India began without any law, was regulated by four sections for a hundred and forty-one years, and is now governed by the Constitution and by the practice of the courts.

A worked example

An advocate in 1900 wants to rely on a decision of the Calcutta High Court given in 1893.

Where must he find it? In the authorised report, published under the authority of the Governor-General in Council, that is, in ILR Calcutta. If he has it only in a private series, section 3 entitles the court to decline to hear it cited and forbids the court to treat it as binding.

Does that make the decision binding if he does produce the ILR? No. Section 4 says the Act gives no decision any further authority than it would otherwise have had. Whether a single judge of the Calcutta High Court in 1893 binds the court hearing him in 1900 is a question of the law of precedent, not of the Act.

The same advocate in 2026, relying on a Supreme Court decision.

What binds? By article 141, the law declared by the Supreme Court, binding on all courts within the territory of India.

Which report? Any accurate one. No statute now restricts which report a court may receive, the Act of 1875 having been repealed in 2016; the citation practice of the court he is in governs, and the court's own record of the judgment is conclusive if the reports disagree.

What beginners get wrong

"Law reporting in India is governed by the Indian Law Reports Act 1875." It was, and the Act was repealed by Act 23 of 2016. A student who says this in 2026 is a decade out of date.

"The Act made the Indian Law Reports the only reports that could be published." It did not restrict publication. It provided that a court is not bound to hear cited, and shall not treat as binding, any report other than an authorised one, which is a rule about authority in court.

"Section 4 made the authorised reports binding." The reverse. Section 4 provides that nothing in the Act gives any judicial decision any further or other authority than it would have had without the Act.

"The Act applied to all courts." Section 3 applies to reports of cases decided by the High Courts established under 24 and 25 Vict. c. 104, on or after the appointed day.

"Article 141 makes reports binding." Article 141 makes the law declared by the Supreme Court binding on all courts within the territory of India. A report is evidence of the law declared, and is not itself the source of the obligation.

Limits and criticism

The Act of 1875 was a small measure for a large problem, and its two weaknesses were visible from the start.

It regulated authority and not accuracy. The mischief in the preamble was the multitude, the expense and the quality of reports. Section 3 addressed the first two by concentrating authority in one series, and addressed quality only indirectly, by making the authorised report the one that counted.

And it left the profession to buy the rest anyway. Because publication was never restricted, the private series continued and multiplied, and an advocate needed both: the authorised report for its status and the private ones for their speed and coverage. The expense the preamble complained of was not diminished.

The larger point, for a history of courts, is what the Act shows about the system it served. India was given, by the Act of 1861, a hierarchy of courts on the English model; by the Act of 1935 and then by article 141, the English rule that decisions of the highest court bind; and by this Act, in 1875, an official series of reports, because the first two are useless without the third. The three together are the machinery of precedent, and this chapter is the last piece of it.

Quick revision

• Act 18 of 1875, assent 13 October 1875, "An Act for the improvement of Law Reports". Preamble: to diminish the multitude and expense of law reports in British India and improve their quality, by authorising the publication of reports of cases decided by the High Courts established under 24 and 25 Vict. c. 104.
• s.1: short title; extends to the whole of British India; commences on a day notified in the Gazette of India.
• s.2: repeals Act II of 1875, an earlier Act of the same year with the same object.
• s.3: no court is bound to hear cited, or shall receive or treat as an authority binding on it, any report of a case decided by those High Courts other than a report published under the authority of the Governor-General in Council. It restricts authority, not publication.
• s.4: nothing in the Act gives any judicial decision any further or other authority than it would have had without the Act.
• The series produced is the Indian Law Reports (ILR), one for each High Court; private series continued alongside it.
• Repealed by the Repealing and Amending Act 2016 (Act 23 of 2016).
• What governs now: article 141, "the law declared by the Supreme Court shall be binding on all courts within the territory of India"; the rules and practice of the courts on citation; and the ordinary law of precedent, under which what binds is the ratio decidendi.

Test yourself

1. What mischief did the Indian Law Reports Act 1875 recite, and how did it address it? Its preamble recited that it was expedient to diminish the multitude and expense of the law reports published in British India and to improve their quality, and that the Governor-General in Council proposed to authorise the publication of reports of cases decided by the High Courts established under 24 and 25 Vict. c. 104. Section 3 addressed it by providing that no court was bound to hear cited, or should receive or treat as binding, any report of such a case other than one published under the authority of the Governor-General in Council.

2. State sections 3 and 4 together and explain why both were needed. Section 3 denies binding authority to unauthorised reports of the decisions of those High Courts. Section 4 provides that nothing in the Act gives any judicial decision any further or other authority than it would have had if the Act had not been passed. Both were needed because section 3 alone might have been read as conferring binding force on whatever appeared in the authorised series; section 4 makes clear that the Act regulates the report and not the decision, whose authority depends on the ordinary law of precedent.

3. Did the Act prohibit private law reporting? No. It said nothing about who might publish. It provided only that a court need not hear an unauthorised report cited and must not treat it as binding. Private series continued to be published throughout, and the profession used both.

4. What is the position today? The Act was repealed by the Repealing and Amending Act 2016, so no statute now restricts which reports a court may receive. What governs is article 141 of the Constitution, by which the law declared by the Supreme Court is binding on all courts within the territory of India, together with the rules and practice of the courts about citation, and the ordinary law of precedent under which the ratio decidendi of a decision binds.

5. Why does a history of courts include a chapter on law reporting? Because a system that follows precedent cannot work unless decisions are accurately recorded and published where they can be found. India was given a hierarchy of courts by the Act of 1861 and a rule that the decisions of the highest court bind, first by section 212 of the Act of 1935 and then by article 141; the Act of 1875 supplied the third element, an official series of reports, without which the other two would have been unenforceable.