Madras High Court

From 1817 to 1862, the Supreme Court of Madras was situated in a building opposite the Chennai Beach railway station. From 1862 to 1892, the High Court was also housed in that building. The present buildings were officially inaugurated on 12 July 1892, when the then Madras Governor, Beilby, Baron Wenlock, handed over the key to the then Chief Justice Sir Arthur Collins.[10]

The statue of Manuneedhi Cholan in the Madras High Court premises

British India's three presidency towns of Madras (Chennai), Bombay (Mumbai), and Calcutta (Kolkata) were each granted a High Court by letters patent dated 26 June 1862.[11] The letters patent were issued by Queen Victoria under the authority of the British parliament's Indian High Courts Act 1861. The three courts remain unique in modern India, having been established under British royal charter; this is in contrast with the country's other high courts, which have been directly established under the Indian Constitution. However, the Constitution of India recognises the status of the older courts.

The Madras High Court was formed by merging the Supreme Court of Judicature at Madras, and the Sadr Diwani Adalat. The Court was required to decide cases in accordance with justice, equity and good conscience. The earliest judges of the High Court included Judges Holloway, Innes, and Morgan. The first Indian to sit as a judge of the High Court was Justice T. Muthuswamy Iyer. Other early Indian judges included Justices V. Krishnaswamy Iyer and P. R. Sundaram Iyer.

The Madras High Court was a pioneer in Original Side jurisdiction reform in favor of Indian practitioners as early as the 1870s.

The Madras High Court's history means that the decisions of the British Judicial Committee of the Privy Council are still binding on it, provided that the ratio of a case has not been overruled by the Supreme Court of India.

Although the name of the city was changed from Madras to Chennai in 1996, the Court as an institution did not follow suit and retained the name as the Madras High Court. However, a Bill to rename the Madras High Court as the Chennai High Court was approved by the cabinet on 5 July 2016, along with the change of name of the Calcutta High Court and Bombay High Court as Kolkata High Court and Mumbai High Court, respectively.[12] The Bill called High Courts (Alternation of Names) Bill has been introduced in the Lok Sabha on 19 July 2016.[13] The Bill is yet to be passed by both Houses of Parliament. However, the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly has passed a unanimous resolution appealing to the Central Government to rename the court as High Court of Tamil Nadu since the Court serves the whole state.[14]

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Madras High Court, Chennai

The High Court complex is located in the sourthern end of George Town. The High Court building was constructed after shifting out a couple of temples that were in existence on the land in the 19th century. The present building now used exclusively by the Madras High Court was actually built to house, along with the High Court, the Courts of Small Causes and the City Civil Court, which were subsequently shifted out to other new buildings on the campus.[15]

Construction of the High Court building, an exquisite example of Indo-Saracenic style of architecture, began in October 1888 and was completed in 1892 with the design prepared by J. W. Brassington, the then consulting architect to the government,[15] and later under the guidance of the famed architect Henry Irwin,[16] who completed it with the assistance of J. H. Stephens.

J. W. Brassington initially prepared a plan to construct a building with 11 court halls at an estimate of ₹945,000. Of these, six were meant for the High Court, four for the Small Causes Court, and one for the City Civil Court. An additional building to house the lawyers’ chambers was subsequently added to the plan, with a walkway on the first floor to connect it to the main building, increasing the total expenditure to ₹1,298,163. Complementing a 125-feet-tall standalone lighthouse that was already in existence on the court campus, a dioptric light was built on the 142-feet-high main tower of the building, raising the total height of the tower to 175 feet.[15]

Save for the heavy steel girders and some ornamental tiles, almost all the materials for the construction were procured locally. Bricks and terracotta articles were brought from the government brickfields. Most of the construction work was executed by artisans trained at the School of Arts in the city.[15]

The High Court building was damaged in the shelling of Madras by SMS Emden on 22 September 1914, at the beginning of the First World War. It remains one of the very few Indian buildings to have been damaged by a German attack.

There are several matters of architectural interest in the High Court. The painted ceilings and the stained glass doors are masterpieces in themselves. The old lighthouse of the city is housed within the High Court campus but is unfortunately poorly maintained and is in disrepair.

The Department of Posts has allotted a Postal Index Number (PIN) code of 600104 to the zone occupied by the Chennai High Court. The boundaries of the High Court complex are marked by two roads, namely, Prakasam Road (formerly Broadway) and Rajaji Road (the old North Beach Road), stretching northward from the statue of Rajaji in the northeast and the statue of T. Prakasamgaru in the southwest within the complex. The complex houses the largest number of courts in Asia.[17]

Panoramic view of the High Court and its surroundings

The current Chief Justice of the Madras High Court is Sanjib Banerjee. The court currently has 57 judges, including the Chief Justice, who exercise civil, criminal, writ, testamentary and admiralty jurisdiction.[18] The Madurai Bench has been functioning since 2004.

The vestiges of the colonial High Court continue to characterise the premises till date. In a rare tradition which is today a distinction, Judges of the Madras High Court are still led by orderlies who bear a ceremonial mace made of silver. This is a practice so old and Anglican that most High Courts and even the Supreme Court of India have either not had the practice at all or have abandoned it long back.[19]

The Madras High Court is the birthplace of organised legal reporting in India. It is home to the Madras Law Journal,[20] which was the first journal dedicated to reporting texts of judgments of the High Court started way back in 1891.

The High Courts, c. 1905

An informal eponymous club called The Saturday Club, that met at 11 a. m. every week was started at the house of the Vakil Bar's senior member Sir S. Subramania Iyer in Mylapore in 1888 with all leading members of the Madras Bar taking part. At one of these meetings, it was decided to start The Madras Law Journal, which was inspired by the then newly established periodicals like Law Quarterly Review, started by Sir Frederick Pollock in England in 1885 and The Harvard Law Review established by Harvard Law School Association in 1887.

The objectives of the journal were laid out in the preface of the first issue: "In addition to giving our own reports of the decisions of the High Courts in Madras and other places, we hope to place before our readers translations of various Hindu Law Books which remain yet untranslated, insofar as they have bearing on questions which practically arise for decision every day in our Courts of Justice. We propose further from time to time, to place side by side the conflicting decisions of the various Courts in India on the same point in the hope that such procedure will enable the Courts to act in greater harmony than they do at present in the interpretation of Acts and enunciation of general principles of law and when this is not possible, to enable the Legislature to bring about such harmony by removing the ambiguities which may have given rise to such discordant views."

Right from the beginning, The Madras Law Journal has been a source of inspiration and instruction to the students of law, and its notes and editorial reviews always evoked admiration and respect. It achieved well-deserved fame throughout India, in England and America and indeed throughout the British Empire for its quickness and accuracy in reporting and discrimination in the selection of cases to be reported. It has now come to occupy a premier place among legal periodicals in the country and its weight and authority have been consistently considerable with the Bench and the Bar in all parts of India.

Madras Weekly Notes is a Law Journal reporting the Criminal Side Judgements of the Hon'ble Madras High Court from 1910 to till date.

Mode of Citation : 1929 1 MWN(Cr.) 1 which means <Year> <Volume> <Journal Name> <Page Number>

CTC - Current Tamil Nadu Cases. CWC - Current Writ Cases. TNMAC - Tamil Nadu Motor Accident Cases.

Established in 2004, the court is a boon to the people in fourteen southern districts of Tamil Nadu. The bench has Kanyakumari, Tirunelveli, Thoothukudi, Tenkasi, Madurai, Dindigul, Ramanathapuram, Virudhunagar, Theni, Sivaganga, Pudukottai, Thanjavur, Tiruchirappalli and Karur districts under its jurisdiction.

The 107-acre campus of the Court is one of the largest court campuses in the country, Second Largest in the world after the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, London and the four-storey administrative building attracts hundreds of litigants every day. The court complex has 12 court halls, furnished on the model of the court halls in the Supreme Court, the Delhi and the Madras High Courts.

The court, since its inauguration on 24 July 2004, has perked up the legal process in the southern districts and has cultivated a large number of social activists, who vouch for the interest of the public though their public interest litigations.[21]

• High Courts of India
• Architecture of Chennai
• Heritage structures in Chennai

• High Court of Madras web site.