The Indian legal system and legal method: the sources mapped onto India, the courts, finding and reading the law

LUG-102 Jurisprudence — Legal Method, Indian Legal System and Basic Theory of Law, Unit III · LLB · 60 min

This closing lecture of Unit III turns theory into practice. It maps the sources of law onto the Indian legal system - the Constitution, Union and State legislation under the three Lists, subordinate legislation, precedent through the hierarchy of courts, custom and the personal laws, and international law through Articles 51 and 253 -, describes the courts from the Supreme Court to the subordinate judiciary and the tribunals, and then teaches legal method: how a lawyer finds the law (bare Acts, India Code, the law reports and citation), how to read a judgment (facts, issues, ratio, obiter, order) and a statute (title, preamble, definitions, provisos, explanations, illustrations, schedules), and how the common-law method of India differs from the civil-law method of the Continent. It completes the answer to the 2024-25 question on sources under national and international law.

Objectives

Map Salmond's sources onto the Indian legal system and rank them when they conflict
Describe the hierarchy of courts and tribunals in India and the binding force of each level's decisions
Explain how custom, personal law and international law enter Indian law
Find the law: use bare Acts, India Code, the law reports and the standard citation form
Read a judgment and a statute methodically, and distinguish the common-law method from the civil-law method

Slides

The sources of law mapped onto India
The Constitution as the apex norm
The courts: Supreme Court, High Courts, subordinate courts, tribunals
Custom and the personal laws in the Indian system
International law in the Indian system
Finding the law: bare Acts, India Code and the law reports
How to read a judgment
How to read a statute
Legal method: the common-law and civil-law families
The method applied: from a client's story to an answer

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