Justice V. Ramsubramanian: Tenure in Numbers

Justice V. Ramasubramanian will retire on June 29th, 2023 after nearly 4 years at the Supreme Court. At the time of his retirement, he was the 10th senior most judge of the SC.

Expected Tenures

Figure 1 shows the expected tenures of all sitting judges of the SC. The Judges are listed on the ‘y’-axis. On the ‘x-axis, the expected tenure is marked in years. 

Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud has the highest tenure of 8.5 years of all sitting judges of the SC. Currently, the average tenure stands at 5.4 years. Justice Subramanian’s 3.75-year tenure falls short of the average.

Number of Judgements

Figure 2 shows the total number of judgements authored by sitting judges who have served for more than 2 years at the SC. The outer blue bar shows the total number of judgements authored by the judge and the inner yellow bar shows the judgements per year. 

Justice Ramasubramanian has authored 102 judgements in his 3.75-year tenure. This means he has written 27.7 judgements per year.

Subject-Matter of Judgements

Figure 3 above shows the subject matter of the judgements authored by Justice Ramasubramanian**. 

A majority of his judgements (24) are in civil matters. This is about 17% of his judgements. Criminal law-related judgements stand second (22), followed by service law matters (7). 

Justice Ramasubramanian has authored 43 other judgements in subject matters ranging from company, insolvency, environment, insurance, election and commercial law.

Rate of Judgement Authorship

Figure 4 above shows three values for each year that Justice Ramasubramanian was at the SC: 

1. The number of judgements he authored (yellow bar),
2. The number of benches he was on (dark blue bar) and 
3. The percentage of those benches that he wrote a judgement in (light blue bar)

Justice Ramasubramanian showed an increasing rate of judgement authorship in the first three years of his tenure. In his three months at the SC in 2019, he authored judgements in 6.1% of the cases he heard. 

In 2020—his first full year at the SC, his rate of judgement authorship increased to 34.3% despite the Covid-19 pandemic. 

In 2021 his authorship rate further increased, with judgements authored in 40.5% of the cases he heard. 

In 2022, he heard more cases than ever. However, he authored judgements for only 29.1% of these cases. 

In the 5 working months of 2023 before his retirement, he heard 36 cases and authored judgements in 16 of them bringing his rate of judgement authorship to 44.4%.