Citation is the part of memorial writing students treat as formatting and judges treat as evidence.
A footnote is a claim: this proposition is supported, and here is exactly where. Most student footnotes fail that test in one of a few predictable ways.
Cite the paragraph, not the case
Maneka Gandhi v. Union of India runs to a great many paragraphs. Citing it for a proposition, with no pinpoint, tells the reader you know the case exists.
Citing paragraph 56 tells them you read it.
This is the highest-return change available to a memorial. It needs no extra research, only the discipline of noting the paragraph while the judgment is still open in front of you.
Take the format from the rulebook, not from a friend
Indian moots ask for Bluebook, OSCOLA, or an SCC format, and the rules say which. They also say the edition.
Bluebook 20th and 21st are not the same. A memorial in the wrong edition drops marks in a category you could have won by reading one page.
Settle this before writing a single footnote. Converting a finished memorial from one citation style to another is genuinely miserable and entirely avoidable.
Cite the reporter the bench uses
For Indian judgments that usually means SCC, or the neutral citation where the rules permit it.
Never cite an Indian Kanoon URL in a memorial. Indian Kanoon is an excellent place to find a judgment and not a place to cite from. Find it there, then go and get the reported citation.
A pile of citations is not an argument
Twelve footnotes on one sentence does not make it twelve times better supported. It makes a reader suspect that none of the twelve says quite what you need.
One authority that squarely holds the point beats six that gesture at it. If you have six, you probably do not have one.
The compendium is part of the argument
Where a compendium of authorities is required, build it as you write, tabbed and paginated to match your footnotes.
A judge who wants paragraph 56 and finds it in four seconds forms a different impression of your team than one who watches you leaf through two hundred pages. It is scored indirectly, in every category.
The ten-footnote test
Take any footnote in your memorial. Open the authority. Read the paragraph you cited.
Does it say what your sentence says it says?
Do that for ten footnotes chosen at random before you submit. Most teams find at least one that does not, and finding it yourself is a great deal better than a judge finding it for you.
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