# of Judgments Authored: Lokur (L) vs. Average (A)

Madan B. Lokur J retires on December 30th 2018. The Supreme Court’s Christmas and New Year’s break starts on December 17th and ends on January 1st. Meaning, Justice Lokur last day of open court was today, December 14th.

One common method of assessing a judge’s performance is to count the number of judgments they have authored. Of course, this in itself is not sufficient to arrive at any conclusions about a judge’s performance.

Lokur J authored 159 judgments as a Justice of the Supreme Court. He authored slightly more than the average for the other sitting Justices of the Supreme Court: 134. When compared to only senior Justices, one again finds that Lokur J sits right in the middle. The table below compares the five senior most sitting Justices (including Lokur):

Another important metric for assessing a judge’s performance is the number of judgments they are cited in. The number of judgments they are cited in roughly indicates the importance of their judgments. Lokur J has been cited in 117 judgments. This is well above the average for sitting Supreme Court Justices, which is only 64. When one compares the number of judgments Lokur has authored to the number of judgments he has been cited in, one becomes even more aware of how he has out-performed the average. Lokur’s author-to-citation percentage is 74%, whereas that of the average is only 48%.

When compared to his other senior Justices, Lokur is once again right in the middle. He has been cited in more judgments than both Bobde and Ramana, but in a fewer judgments than both Gogoi and Sikri.

For a graph of the authored and cited in numbers of each sitting Supreme Court Justice, click here.

Data sourced from Manupatra