Reporter’s Diary: Lengthy judgments may miss law journals

But during the hearing in a politically sensitive case, it was heartening to see advocates, too, contributing their bit in reducing the use – and wastage – of papers.

While quoting a judgment, a senior counsel noted that he had not bothered to make copies of the 600-page judgment as he was only going to cite a paragraph from it. Otherwise, it would involve wastage of huge volumes of paper, as he would have to make four or five copies of the judgment to be offered to the opponent advocates. Hence, he said, he was going to cite the relevant para from the book, and handed over the same to the judge.

The judge did not only welcome it, but had to add his own experience as a quip. Recalling an instance where one of his judgments had run to over 800 pages, he said he realised that it would never get published in the law journals. He had then reduced the judgment to 300 pages. But it was not published even after that, the judge joked, leading to loud laughter in the court room. 

Besides being the soul of wit, brevity is also bound to save a lot of paper.