The Supreme Court today laid down a new doctrine that, if requested, would allow courts to temporarily ban media from reporting a case if it would adversely affect the trial, but the special constitutional bench of five judges declined to create wider guidelines on how the media should report court cases.

Breaking: The Supreme Court today overruled the doctrine laid down in its own year 2002 landmark Bhatia International v Bulk Trading SA & Anr case, which held that Indian courts had exclusive jurisdiction to test the validity of an arbitral award made in India even when the proper law of the contract is the law of another country.

Karnataka high court’s “radically pro-family” judge K Bhaktavatsala told woman defending her husband’s divorce petition that she must “adjust” to domestic abuse meted out by her husband because such abuse was the norm, reported a number of newspapers . The 59-year-old judge has been serving in the h...

The retirement age for high court judges should be increased from 62 to 65 to match the current retirement age of Supreme Court judges, argues former solicitor general of India TR Andhyarujina. For Supreme Court judges it should, in turn, be raised to 70 to match the international standard, he adds....

Exclusive: Pharmaceutical company Natco has filed in the Delhi high court against intellectual property (IP) blog SpicyIP, claiming that the website published an article that allegedly contained “false, derogatory and defamatory” statements about the company.

Exclusive: Senior counsel Paras Kuhad, who founded Paras Kuhad & Associates, and senior counsel Rakesh Khanna have accepted appointments to become additional solicitor general (ASG) in the Supreme Court.

Bombay high court judges SA Bobde and RG Ketkar suddenly, and mysteriously, recuse themselves from hearing the Adarsh housing society petitions against 13 retired bureaucrats, politicians and defence personnel, for alleged money laundering. They had been hearing the matter for several months now. “N...

Eastern Book Company (EBC), which publishes Indian case reports in its Supreme Court Cases (SCC) offering, won a temporary ex parte injunction in a Lucknow district court last week, restraining New York-based multinational Thomson Reuters from selling and distributing its allegedly infringing India-focused legal research products Westlaw and Indlaw. Thomson Reuters denied any infringement.

The Supreme Court reaffirmed the death sentence upheld by the Bombay High Court in February 2011 against Ajmal Amir Kasab, one of the gunmen in the 26/11 Mumbai terrorism attack that killed 166. The bench of justices Aftab Alam and CK Prasasd said: “Ajmal Kasab’s act is very much an act of waging a ...

SH Kapadia: Dignified Forbes does a profile of Chief Justice of India (CJI) SH Kapadia, gathering a remarkable biography from eating Bombay Chana at Flora Fountain as a class IV employee at Bombay HC, to the breeze in BHC’s courtroom number 3 and his hard-working rise to judge, a special court judge...

Senior counsel Harish Salve’s 22 minute interview with Bloomberg TV India by @thecourtroom1 . Pretty tame stuff, but interesting and Salve on top form [ YouTube ] @courtwitness tweets: Admire how neatly @hsalve collapses “corporates” & “citizen” when talking about mistrust of decisions | But co...

Exclusive: The Bar Council of India’s (BCI) demonstration on 8 August has been indefinitely postponed because talks were ongoing between the lawyers’ regulator and the government, the Delhi high court was told today, disposing of the writ petition of advocate Anoop Prakash Awasthi against the BCI.

Exclusive: The Delhi high court issued notice to the Bar Council of India (BCI) to explain how it would continue with its proposed agitation against the Higher Education and Research (HER) Bill 2011, with the BCI having taken police permission for a Dharna in Jantar Mantar on 8 August.

Exclusive: Advocate Anoop Prakash Awasthi’s contempt of court petition against several senior members of the Bar Council of India (BCI) and the Delhi bar council will be heard tomorrow by the Delhi high court’s chief justice.

Awasthi claims that the BCI’s nationwide two-day strike against the Higher Education and Research Bill 2011 violated an earlier Supreme Court order restricting lawyers going on strike.

Exclusive: The Bar Council of India (BCI) and the Human Resources Development (HRD) have continued being at loggerheads over the Higher Education and Research Bill 2011 (HER Bill), which eventually culminated in a two-day strike last week, as recent correspondence from HRD minister Kapil Sibal revealed limited communication between the warring parties.

Exclusive: Advocate Anoop Prakash Awasthi’s writ challenging the Bar Council of India’s (BCI) two-day strike against the Higher Education and Research Bill 2011 was not taken up by the Delhi high court yesterday.

However, Awasthi vowed to bring contempt of court proceedings tomorrow against bar council members for violating an earlier Supreme Court judgment banning two-day strikes by lawyers.

Exclusive: Right to Information (RTI) activist and advocate Anoop Prakash Awasthi filed a writ petition before the Delhi high court today, challenging the two-day nationwide lawyers’ strike called by the Bar Council of India (BCI) for 11 and 12 July 2012 to oppose the Higher Education and Research Bill 2011.

Exclusive: Supreme Court senior advocate Sidharth Luthra has today accepted his appointment to become additional solicitor general (ASG).

Exclusive: Over the summer holidays the cases pending at the Supreme Court has shot up by around 3,000 cases, with 2,000 pending cases added in the month of July alone when just over 500 cases were disposed of – a record since the start of Legally India’s Pendency Project in May 2011. It’s not looking good.

Advocates must renew their licence to practice every five years after paying Rs 600 as renewal fees, according to a resolution passed by the Bar Council of India (BCI) on 1 June.