Supreme Court Justice JS Khehar has been formally confirmed by the President of India as the next Chief Justice of India (CJI) to succeed Justice TS Thakur and will be the first CJI from the Sikh community, according to the Indian Express.

The Supreme Court of India just finished its work for this year and had an action-packed, if shortened week, the High Courts have been at it, and the organs of Government are all functioning, grinding out laws, rules, guidelines, notifications and much more to govern/rule/harass/intimidate/thieve the populace (delete as per political persuasion). Parliament has… well… you saw how that went.

The Bar Council of India (BCI) cannot be relied upon to take the legal services liberalisation process forward, said NLU Delhi vice chancellor (VC) Ranbir Singh on Saturday.

This is an effort to try and sift through the tonnes of “content” about the law, courts and legal developments every week and bring you the most interesting and important. This newsletter will be a mix of links to original content, opinion and commentary, and the occasional gif. This is not just for lawyers, but for anyone who wants to keep up to date with what’s happening in the world of the law and legal institutions.

A Supreme Court of justices Dipak Misra and Amitava Roy, who had passed a controversial order purporting to make playing of the national anthem in cinemas obligatory, today said that cinema goers who were physically disabled would not have to stand but should show “conduct commensurate to respect”, according to Janta Ka Reporter.

Ex-Supreme Court judge Markandey Katju has offered a two-page apology to the Supreme Court, saying he would be prepared to read it out in person in open court if required, in marked contrast to his belligerence last month after he accused the Supreme Court of conducting a surgical strike on him to humiliate him (which, perhaps, was kind of true in their suo motu contempt action against him for one of his many blog posts that were critical-cum-offensive against the judiciary).

70 out of the 100 Supreme Court judges, who retired as on 12 February 2016, took up post-retirement jobs with various permanent and ad hoc bodies and committees, with the greatest number taking up quasi-judicial posts, according to data collected by the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy.

The Bar Council of India (BCI) talks to come up with a new proposal to reform its regulation of the legal profession, have been shrouded in secrecy due to a media gag order since October.

The Supreme Court today refused to entertain the petition of BJP leader and lawyer Ashwani Kumar Upadhyay, who seeking to get an order to make playing of the national anthem compulsory before court proceedings from the same bench that had on Wednesday passed a controversial order making the playing of the anthem in cinemas mandatory, reported PTI.

The 10th All India Bar Exam (AIBE) is not even in the pipeline almost nine months after the 9th AIBE, after the Bar Council of India (BCI) notified on the official AIBE website that it has not yet decided the exam date and that candidates should “kindly keep visiting” the AIBE website for further update.

A Supreme Court bench of Chief Justice of India (CJI) TS Thakur and justices AK Sikri and SA Bobde today ordered a ban on all sales of firecrackers and the issuing of new licences in Delhi.

“On Wednesday, a Supreme Court bench of Justices Ranjan Gogoi and N V Ramana ruled that no one could have copyright over judgments delivered by the apex court. It could be reproduced in its raw form by anyone without the risk of being accused of infringing copyright, the bench said, settling a long-standing dispute,” reported the Times of India.

According to a Right to Information (RTI) response received and reported by Bar & Bench, between 1990 and 2016, the Karnataka Water Resources Department has spent at least Rs 37.5 crore on around 20 lawyers representing it in disputes such as the Cauvery battle, of which 91% (or Rs 34.22 crore) were billed by five senior lawyers alone.

A petition of 57 aspiring national law school students are set to get their first hearing before the Allahabad high court tomorrow (17 November), with advocate Sushmita Mukherjee challenging the Bar Council of India (BCI) and Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) age limit of 20 years.

A Supreme Court bench headed by Justice Ranjan Gogoi, together with justices PC Pant and UU Lalit, issued a contempt notice on retired Supreme Court judge Markandey Katju in a review petition in the Soumya murder case to which Gogoi had last month surprisingly invited Katju to argue in.

The Supreme Court is close to banning the sale of firecrackers in Delhi, as it today said it will soon pass an order prohibiting the licensing authority for the sale of firecrackers from issuing new licenses. It will also ask the authority to suspend existing licenses and to recall the existing stock of firecrackers with sellers.

Senior counsel and parliamentarian Ram Jethmalani, who’s been waging a war with the governing party after falling out over the issue of black money, wrote in a blog post that the demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes is “some good news in the matter of black money recovery”, although it was primarily a “cover up operation” by the government.

Senior counsel and Bar Council of India (BCI) chairman Manan Kumar Mishra has sent a letter to prime minister Narendra Modi, copying in the finance, law and commerce ministers, pleading with Modi to not challenge the BCI’s role in regulating the legal profession and the entry of foreign law firms and to bring the BCI back to the negotiating table about the future of the profession.

The Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) is of no interest to the government, submitted the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) in the Supreme Court yesterday, in response to Shamnad Basheer’s challenge to the conduct of CLAT by national law universities (NLUs).

The Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) core committee decided to bar candidates above the age of 20 years from appearing in the CLAT, 2017 onward, following the Bar Council of India’s (BCI) September 2016 circular to law schools reinstating the age bar for the LLB degree in India.