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10 J. Empirical Legal Stud. 570 (2013)
A Quantitative Analysis of the Indian Supreme Court's Workload

handle is hein.journals/emplest10 and id is 584 raw text is: Journal of Empirical Legal Studies Volume 10, Issue 3, 570-601, September 2013 A Quantitative Analysis of the Indian Supreme Court's Workload Nick Robinson* This article analyzes the Indian Supreme Court's docket in detail from 1993 to 2011. It also draws on available data to describe more broadly the workings of the Court before 1993. The article explains how deficiencies in the way data are currently collected and categorized by the Court presents challenges in developing a full picture of its workload. Using the admit- tedly imperfect data set, it then analyzes the Supreme Court's caseload by geographic region of appeal, subject matter category, petition type, and other classifications. Among other findings, this analysis shows that the Court is disproportionately accessed by those close to Delhi and with more resources and that the Supreme Court's multiplicity of benches and cases may be undercutting precedent following in the Indian judicial system. 1. INTRODUCTION With up to 31 judges, sitting in over a dozen courtrooms, the Indian Supreme Court is both powerful and sprawling.' In scores of major cases each year its orders have far-reaching *Centre for Policy Research, Dharam Marg, Chanakyapuri, New Delhi-I 10021; email: nickrobinson5@gmail.com. I thank Sidharth Chauhan for his help in framing this project and his support throughout it. Vrinda Bhandari, Utkarsh Saxena, and Vivek Shivakumar provided valuable research assistance. Sudhir Krishnaswamy, Abhayraj Naik, Shishir Bail, Vikas Kumar, and Manavi Belgaumkar from Azim Premji University gave useful feedback that made this article considerably stronger, as did Marc Galanter, Sarayu Natarajan, Prashant Reddy, and Sushant Sinha. Numerous individuals, including both current and former Supreme Court judges, as well as Supreme Court staff, helpfully answered questions and provided information during the course of research for this project. All errors are my own. 'Currently, the Indian Supreme Court may have up to 31 judges, including the chief justice, but often a handful of positions remain vacant at any given time. See Supreme Court (Number ofJudges) Amendment Act 2008. Each courtroom of the Supreme Court typically hears cases between 10:30 to 1:00 and 2:00 to 4:00 Monday through Friday (except holidays). Admission matters are heard on Monday and Friday. On a typical Monday or Friday, a given courtroom will generally hear 50 to 75 cases involving admission. If these matters are accepted to be heard by the Court, they are then scheduled for regular hearing, which is on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. On these days, each courtroom hears on average two to three regular hearing cases (although a bench may hear only one such matter or more than 10). On these regular hearing days, admission cases may also be mentioned (which in a typical courtroom could add from 0 to 25 more cases). It is important to note that cases and matters are not the same. A bench may have 20 cases listed before it, but each case may on average include two matters that relate to the same case. In other words, in that situation, disposing of 20 cases would in fact dispose of 40 matters. In 2013, the Supreme Court was scheduled to sit at its full strength for 190 total days: 113 regular hearing days and 77 admission days. 570

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