While dealing with an insurance case on Thursday, Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud stated that there had been a "marked departure" in the way precedents were cited in judgments. He stated that while it was once common for judges to refer to cases by naming the judge who wrote the decision, this was no longer the case. Cases are now referred to by their cause titles.

CJI Chandrachud remarked: "Actually, I have also noticed that in the older judgements– 1950s and all, in the Letters Patent Appeal, they used to always say that the appeal arises from a judgement of Justice JC Shah. Later on there has been a marked departure. Now we do not refer to the name of the judge."

CJI DY Chandrachud also said: "In fact, I must tell you on a very lighter vein, I was very impressed by the judgement of a single judge. I mentioned the name of the judge in one of my judgements. Then my colleague returned the judgement otherwise agreeing with it, but my colleague put a little note asking should we mention the name of the judge. So this time it was of course in a laudatory way but then I deleted it. Now the trend has changed, we don't name the judge. The earlier judgements, you would see that Justice MC Chagla etc would always refer to the name of the judge but no longer."

The courtroom exchange occurred when a counsel appearing before the CJI expressed surprise that the division bench had named the judge who authored a precedent in its order.