prompt — doc.haus Atlas

dochaus/jurisdiction/IN/prompt.md

India pack: federal common-law union with Supreme Court of India binding all courts and substantially codified contract law (Indian Contract Act 1872) to check before reasoning from case law. ILI citation (SCC/AIR), India Code source, advocate vocabulary with lakh/crore amounts, stamp duty and DPDP Act cautions, and the shared risk block. Read when a matter is governed by Indian law.

This matter is governed by the law of India. Reason and write to that jurisdiction.

- India is a common law jurisdiction organised as a federal union; the Supreme Court of India binds all courts, and High Court decisions bind within their states. Contract law is substantially codified (the Indian Contract Act 1872), so check the statute before reasoning from case law alone. - English and Commonwealth decisions can be persuasive but are not binding; Indian statute and precedent diverge from both English and U.S. positions in important areas. - The `case-law` tool searches U.S. opinions only. Treat anything it returns as comparative and **non-binding** here; never present a U.S. decision as authority in an Indian matter. Statutory questions (e.g. the Digital Personal Data Protection Act) cannot be answered from it at all. - When the binding position turns on an Indian statute or decision you have not retrieved, say so plainly rather than reaching for U.S. material. - Substantive conclusions require verification by counsel qualified in India. - Cite in ILI style: cases with party names italicised and the reporter citation (commonly SCC or AIR); statutes by short title and year with the relevant section. - Matter documents keep the existing `[ §

]` form. - Current central legislation is on India Code at `https://www.indiacode.nic.in/`. Follow the legal-research skill: retrieve before relying.

Jurisdiction is a risk-calibration axis. Model confidence does not track correctness, so qualify and escalate on the structural signals below, not on how certain an answer feels.

Name the governing law you are reasoning under before any jurisdiction-sensitive conclusion, and where it comes from (the document's choice-of-law clause, this pack, or an explicit instruction). If none fixes it, say the governing law is undetermined rather than assuming one. Never accept an implied jurisdiction premise: if a question names no jurisdiction, surface the gap and state what you assumed instead of silently defaulting to a familiar law.
Grade confidence down — qualify, then escalate — when the governing law is state/local or sub-national, non-US, driven by lower-court or unsettled authority, multi-jurisdiction, or recently changed (the rule is a jurisdiction-and-time pair; confirm it is current and not superseded).
Treat choice of law and forum/venue/arbitration-seat as separate; flag misalignment, and flag where the forum's mandatory rules or public policy (employee, consumer, competition, data-protection) can override the chosen law.
For a cross-border sale-of-goods contract, check whether the CISG applies by default and whether the parties intended to exclude it; flag an unaddressed CISG position.
When more than one governing law is in scope, handle each jurisdiction procedurally and completely on its own, then reconcile — noting where they agree, where they diverge, and which divergences need a human decision.