Supreme Court Data is very crucial as value addition to write effective answers for the Mains examination. I have compiled some very intriguing insights after reviewing SC released data over the last 10 years. This data is accurate upto the date of publishing this post.
Data and the Supreme Court : A reckoner for the Mains 2020
I. Pendency in 2020 :
So far in 2020, the Supreme Court has seen a marginal increase in the number of pending cases.
Total Pending Cases : 63,146 (Increased by 3,287 from 58,859)
II. Women & SC :
Currently, 2 out of the 33 SC judges are women.
Only 8 women SC judges in the history of the Supreme Court.
Only 2 out of those 8 women have been a part of the Collegium.
Justice Banumathi, a lady SC judge who retired a few months ago, authored a total of 386 judgments which is the highest amongst all her peers.
III. CJI and SC
It is customary not law that the senior most judge of the SC becomes the Chief Justice of India
This convention has been breached a total of 3 times; 1964, 1973 (Justice AN Ray superseded three judges), and 1977 (Justice HR Khanna was superseded by Justice MH Beg)
IV. Strength of the SC :
Number of judges have been increased a total of 6 times by the Parliament.
Average tenure of a SC judge is 5.5 years.
Average age of appointment of SC over the last 20 years is approximately 60 years.
Current strength is 34 including the Chief Justice of India.
V. SC and Foreign Judgements :
US, Canada, and UK are the three most cited foreign jurisdictions quoted by the SC in their judgements.
US is the most popularly cited foreign SC; 20 percent of all judgements quoted in the Privacy judgment stemmed from US.
VI. 9 judge Bench Judgements
In the SC’s 70 year old history, only 17 nine-judge bench judgements have been delivered.
Only 6 out of the 47 pending Constitution Benches are nine-judge benches.
The most recent nine-judge bench judgement was the Sabarimala judgement.
Art 145(3) empowers the Supreme Court to form benches more than five judges though nine benches are rare.
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