Sudhir Krishnaswamy and Madhav Khosla published a review of Judges of the Supreme Court of India: 1950-1989 by George H. Gadbois (New Delhi: Oxford University Press) titled ‘Inside Our Supreme Court’ in the 20th August 2011 issue of the Economic and Political Weekly. They observe that:
For all the attention that the Supreme Court (SC) of India has attracted in recent years, very little is known and understood about the personalities who inhabit and shape the institution. Students searching for an institutional sociology or ethnography of the Court have to remain largely content with journalistic or biographical accounts. George Gadbois’ new book Judges of the Supreme Court of India generated considerable excitement as it promised to fill this gap in our legal literature. This lucidly written and carefully researched book is organised into two parts. The first contains short biographical essays on the first 93 judges of the Court (who served from 1950 to mid-1989). The second, substantially slimmer, part moves beyond individual biographical accounts to draw broader conclusions from the data, identifying, for instance, the caste or regional composition of the Court over these years. This part aims at painting a “collective portrait” of the Court, and deciphering patterns in the selection of judges.