Law Reports

The Nagpur and Karachi series are missing from the series. With the exceptions of Burma and North-West Frontier Province, reports of the superior courts in the non-regulation provinces before their inclusion in the Indian Law Reports are not included in the series. Privy Council appeal cases are reported in the Bengal Law Reports from 1868 to 1875 and subsequently in the Indian Law Reports.

The Legal Adviser's Records (L/L) includes an extensive collection of papers relating to Privy Council appeals.

Unrestricted

Before 1861 the reports are mainly those of the civil appelate courts of Sadr Diwani Adalat and the criminal appelate courts of Sadr Nizamut Adalat in Bengal and North Western Provinces and Sadr Foujdari Adalat in Madras and Bombay. There are also short series of decisions of zillah or district courts. All these courts were directly under the control of the East India Company and were primarily for the use of the Indian population outside the presidency towns. Jurisdiction over British residents was chiefly in the hands of the Supreme Courts established by royal charter at Calcutta, Madras and Bombay which maintained an existence independent of the Company. Reports of these courts are very fragmentary. The Indian High Courts Act of 1861 abolished both the Sadr and the Supreme Courts and replaced them by High Courts at Calcutta, Madras and Bombay exercising civil and criminal appelate jurisdiction. A further high court was created at Allahabad in 1866 and until 1875 the reports of the four courts were published separately. The Indian Law reports began publication in 1876 with separate series for each existing High Court and for the later creations at Patna in 1916, Lahore in 1919, Rangoon in 1922 and Nagpur in 1936. There were also series for the Chief Courts at Lucknow from 1926 and Karachi from 1939.