'BREVITY' IS THE SOUL OF JUDGEMENT WRITING.

“Natural justice necessitates full hearing, not a flood of words of forbidding length.” – Justice Krishna Iyer. 

As students of law, we often get weary of reading long expositions in judgments addressing minor or pre-determined issues. The true art of judgment writing should be brief and well articulated but the same must not be at the cost of clarity. In India’s current judicial scenario, the pronouncement of lengthy judgments has become a commonplace, and there has been a growing concern with the copy-and-paste trend in the Indian Judiciary that has been critically viewed by many jurists and practitioners worldwide.  The true essence of judgeship resonates when the clarification, elucidation, and explanations of law with the rationality of facts are abbreviated and crisp.

The great Justice Iyer in K. Kalpana Saraswathi v. P.S.S. Somasundaram Chettiar (1980) 1 SCC 630  while considering an appeal that consisted of voluminous Judicial manuscripts and arguments, digressed from passing long exhaustive judgment and adhered to being as brief and concise as possible. He intended not only to limit himself from recording exhaustive explanation of statements, arguments and legislation but also focused on saving judicial time to achieve the supreme art of producing maximum result with minimum effort. He penned that “brevity is the soul of art and justicing, including judgment-writing, must practice the art of brevity, especially where no great issue of legal moment compels long exposition. Therefore, we mean to…adopt the technique, which "is simply the perfect economy of means to an end". For another reason also the need for parsimony exists since the court is in crisis, docket-logged and fatigued. A judgment can be brief but not blank, and there is no reason to repeat the details of a case where there is already an exhaustive statement in the judgment under appeal.” The Hon’ble Judge substantiated the arguments at length along with the relevant legal issues under challenge, but refrained from reiterating the same on paper. He noted that if the adjudicating court has a comprehensive grasp of the facts and legal issues involved, it should restrict itself to a severe economy of words. 

It is indeed an irrefutable fact that a judgment is a manifestation of reasons, which aims to preserve the principles of natural justice as without the same, would obstruct the dispensation of justice. The Supreme Court as time and again reiterated the need for brevity. In CCT v. Shukla & Bros (2010) 4 SCC 785. The SC opinionated that the practice of writing a reasoned judgment, by virtue is a judge-made law that has become a mandatory procedural requirement as it not only provides clarity of thoughts and vision but also leads to proper reasoning to arrive in a just and fair decision. Swatanter Kumar. J, affirming the principles of ‘failure to give reasons amounts to denial of justice’  held that a reasoned judgment has a purpose, logic, and rationale towards the proper administration of justice and though judgments must contain sound reasoning to uphold natural justice principles, they need not be verbose. He further observed that a judgment without elaborated judicial reasoning cannot be deemed insufficient in the eyes of the law but it must simply be sufficient to inform litigants about the grounds for decisions and clear enough for the appellate court to assess and review. 

In Surjeet Singh v. Sadhu Singh (2019) 2 SCC 396. the Apex Court criticized a 60-page order where brevity would have sufficed, noting "…the examination could be confined only to the issue of remand and not beyond it at the same time, there was no need to cite several decisions, and that too in detail.” A division bench of the Supreme Court in Shakuntala Shukla v. State of Uttar Pradesh, (2021) SCC Online SC 672 while reviewing an impugned judgment which was difficult to discern between the submissions and the reasons opinionated that Judgment writing is an art that should be met with law and logic with clarity being the goal.  In State Bank of India and Another v. Ajay Kumar Sood 2022 INSC 833, Chandrachud. J penned, “Brevity is an unwitting victim of an overburdened judiciary” and emphasized that brevity, clarity and simplicity are three components the attributes to a good judgment but also cautioned that brevity must not compromise clarity. 

What has become more common nowadays are lengthy judgments even on issues that do not require long elucidations. The Courts ought to distinguish between unnecessary lengthy reasoning and necessary elaboration, the former includes needless compilations and citations when issues don't warrant them, while the latter consists of accurately reasoned words because natural justice necessitates the same. The Courts should embrace the practice of lucidity for brevity is the soul of judgment writing, and brief, articulate reasoning is sufficient to achieve the necessary outcome as Judicial time is precious and can be used in many beneficial ways.