Report No. 95
26. Will it not make for certainty in Law if the higher courts write shorter judgments?
As against 243 pages of Judgment in a death penalty case by the United States Supreme Court, our Supreme Court has written a 782 pages judgment in Keshvananda Bharti v. State of Kerala, (1973) 4 SCC 225. But in a later case of death penalty (Gregg v. Georgia, 428 US 153) when the United States Supreme Court chose to write per curiam opinion it covered hardly two pages of the Law reports. Lord Kilbrandon has observed that lack of economy in judgment writing is a notoriously discreditable feature of the English jurisprudence [Casselll & Co. v. Broome, (1972) 1. All ER 801 HL].
Back
