In a draft FIR, a charge-sheet, a plaint, or a judgment, the single most consequential grammatical choice an officer makes is the tense of the verb. "The accused fired the shot" fixes a completed past act; "the accused was firing" describes an act in progress; "whoever causes" — the statutory present — speaks for all time. English recognises three times (past, present, future) and four aspects (simple, continuous, perfect, perfect continuous), giving the twelve tenses every judiciary aspirant must control on sight. This chapter sets out each tense with its form and function, then turns to the legal payoff: the sequence-of-tenses rule that governs reported evidence, the present indefinite of statutory commands, and the Supreme Court's "always speaking" doctrine, under which a statute drafted in 1885 still bites on technology invented a century later.
Why Tense Is a Legal, Not Merely Grammatical, Question
Tense locates an action in time and tells the reader whether it is complete, continuing, or yet to occur. In ordinary prose a slip of tense is a stylistic blemish; in legal drafting it can shift liability, alter the date of an offence, or decide whether a power is exhausted or continuing. A charge that the accused "has murdered" the deceased reads oddly because the present perfect blurs the precise moment the law wants pinned down; "committed murder on 4 March" — simple past with a date — is what a court expects. Conversely, a penal section is written in the present indefinite ("Whoever causes death by doing an act with the intention of causing death... commits culpable homicide") precisely so that it applies, timelessly, to every offender on every day the statute is in force.
This dual character — grammar with legal consequences — is why tense sits at the heart of the English for Judiciary syllabus. An aspirant who treats it as schoolroom revision will lose marks in précis, translation, and judgment-writing, and will misread the very provisions being tested. The disciplined approach is to learn the twelve forms cold, then study how courts actually read tense in statutes and depositions. Tense rarely travels alone: it interacts with subject-verb agreement (the verb must match its subject in number before it can carry tense) and with voice (the passive can hide the actor while still fixing the time).
The Architecture: Three Times, Four Aspects, Twelve Tenses
English builds its tense system from two axes. The first is time — past, present, future. The second is aspect, which describes the internal shape of the action: simple (the action as a whole fact), continuous or progressive (the action in progress), perfect (the action viewed as completed and relevant to a reference point), and perfect continuous (an action that was in progress up to a reference point). Multiply three times by four aspects and you get the twelve tenses every grammar primer lists: present simple, present continuous, present perfect, present perfect continuous; past simple, past continuous, past perfect, past perfect continuous; and future simple, future continuous, future perfect, future perfect continuous.
The verb itself carries tense in two ways: by inflection (walk / walked) and by auxiliaries (am walking, have walked, will have been walking). English has no inflected future — "will" and "shall" are modal auxiliaries pressed into temporal service, which is why future "tense" is partly a matter of mood. Mastering the system means knowing, for each of the twelve, the exact auxiliary-plus-participle formula and the situations in which a careful drafter chooses it. The sections that follow take the three times in turn. Tense also depends on a correctly identified verb, so revise the verb categories in parts of speech before proceeding.
The Present Tenses and the Statutory Present
The present simple (he files / she signs) states a general truth, a habitual act, or — critically for lawyers — a standing rule. Penal and procedural provisions are overwhelmingly cast in the present simple: "Whoever commits...", "The Court may ...", "Service shall be deemed to be effected by properly addressing, prepaying and posting...". The present indefinite here is not about the present moment; it is the "omnitemporal" present that makes a command apply on every occasion it is invoked. Section 27 of the General Clauses Act, 1897, illustrates the point: the deeming clause is framed in the present, so the presumption of service operates whenever the conditions of "addressing, prepaying and posting by registered post" are satisfied, today and indefinitely.
The present continuous (is signing, are recording) marks an action in progress now or a temporary arrangement; in evidence it captures conduct caught mid-stream ("the witness deposes that the accused was running" shifts this into the past). The present perfect (has filed, have served) links a past action to present relevance — "the plaintiff has paid the court fee" tells the registry the defect is cured now. The present perfect continuous (has been residing) stresses the duration of an ongoing state up to the present, useful in tenancy and limitation pleadings ("the tenant has been occupying the premises since 2009"). Knowing which present a provision uses prevents the common error of reading a standing command as a one-off past event.
The Past Tenses: Pinning Down the Completed Act
Criminal and civil narration lives in the past. The past simple (fired, executed, registered) is the workhorse of the charge-sheet and the operative part of a judgment's narration of facts: it states a completed act at a definite past time. "On 4 March 2024 the accused stabbed the deceased" is precise because the simple past plus a date fixes both the act and its moment. The past continuous (was driving, were quarrelling) sets the scene — an action in progress when another, shorter action intervened: "the deceased was crossing the road when the truck struck him." The interaction of past continuous (background) and past simple (the decisive event) is exactly how a deposition reconstructs a sequence.
The past perfect (had executed, had absconded) is the "past of the past": it marks an action completed before another past action, indispensable when a judgment orders events. "The accused had already fled before the police reached the spot" makes the chronology unambiguous. The past perfect continuous (had been threatening) shows a continuing past action that preceded another past event ("the accused had been threatening the complainant for months before the assault"), often relevant to motive and prior conduct. A drafter who confuses past simple with past perfect can invert a chronology and so misstate which act caused which — a fatal error in a reasoned order.
The Future Tenses and the Modal Shadow
English expresses future time through the modal auxiliaries will and shall, not through inflection. The future simple (will appear, shall pay) states a future act or a directive: "the respondent shall deposit the amount within thirty days." Note that "shall" in legal drafting often carries an imperative force rather than a purely temporal one — a point that overlaps with the discussion of mandatory and directory provisions in interpretation. The future continuous (will be hearing) describes an action that will be in progress at a future time ("the Bench will be sitting through the vacation").
The future perfect (will have completed) marks an action that will be finished before a future reference point — "by the date of the next hearing the receiver will have filed his report" — and is the natural tense for deadlines measured against a future event. The future perfect continuous (will have been pending) stresses duration up to a future point ("by December the suit will have been pending for ten years"), useful in arguments on delay and limitation. Because future "tense" is built on modals, it bleeds into mood: "shall" can be temporal, mandatory, or even prohibitory, and the careful reader resolves which from context, not from the word alone.
The Sequence-of-Tenses Rule
When a main clause is in the past tense, subordinate clauses generally shift their tense backwards to agree — the sequence-of-tenses rule. "He says that he is innocent" becomes, when reported in the past, "He said that he was innocent." Present becomes past, present perfect and past simple become past perfect, and "will" becomes "would." This is the engine of direct and indirect speech, and it is tested constantly in judiciary papers because depositions, dying declarations, and confessions are routinely converted from the witness's direct words into the reported narrative of an order.
The rule has a crucial exception that lawyers must respect: universal or continuing truths, and statements of law, keep their present tense even after a past reporting verb. "The Court held that Section 300 defines murder" — not "defined" — because the section still defines it. Similarly "the witness stated that the sun rises in the east." Misapplying the backshift to a statement of law produces the howler of writing that a live provision "defined" an offence, implying it has been repealed. Sequence of tenses, therefore, is not mechanical: it bends to the substance of what is being reported.
The backshift also has degrees. A simple-present report ("he is innocent") moves one step to the simple past ("he was innocent"); a present-perfect or past-simple report ("he has paid," "he paid") moves to the past perfect ("he had paid"); and a past-perfect report has nowhere further to go and stays put. Modals shift too: "can" becomes "could," "may" becomes "might," and "will" becomes "would," though "must," "should," and "ought" usually resist change. Because a deposition recorded by a court is itself a reported statement, the judge who later quotes it must apply these gradations consistently, or the chronology of what the witness claimed will quietly distort.
Tense in Statutory Construction: The General Clauses Act
Legislatures are deliberate about tense. The General Clauses Act, 1897, the master key to reading Central enactments, repeatedly deploys the present and the deeming present to make provisions operate continuously. Section 27 provides that service by post "shall be deemed to be effected by properly addressing, prepaying and posting by registered post" the document, and "unless the contrary is proved, to have been effected" at the time the letter would be delivered in the ordinary course of post. The present-tense deeming clause means the presumption arises every time the statutory conditions are met, and the present-tense "unless the contrary is proved" keeps the rebuttal route permanently open.
The drafting convention is that statutes speak in the present indefinite so that they apply to facts as they arise. A penal provision does not say "whoever shall have committed"; it says "whoever commits," addressing every future offender as though the offence were happening now. This is why, when reporting a section, the careful writer preserves the present: the provision is not a historical event but a standing norm. The same convention underlies the "always speaking" doctrine discussed next, under which the present tense of a statute is read as continuously contemporaneous with the moment of application.
The 'Always Speaking' Doctrine and the Present Tense of a Statute
Because statutes are cast in the present, courts treat them as "always speaking": a provision is read as if re-enacted afresh on the day it is applied, so that its language captures developments the original legislature never foresaw. The leading Indian illustration is Senior Electric Inspector v. Laxminarayan Chopra, AIR 1962 SC 159, where the Supreme Court had to decide whether "telegraph line" in legislation built on the Indian Telegraph Act, 1885, could cover wireless transmission unknown when the parent Act was framed. The Court held that the expression was wide enough to take in electric lines used for wireless telegraphy, reasoning that a statute is ordinarily to be construed as continuously operating and as embracing scientific advances within its general words.
The doctrine is the interpretive consequence of the statutory present tense. A provision framed as "whoever transmits by telegraph" is not frozen to 1885 technology; the present "transmits" speaks anew at every moment of application. The doctrine of ongoing or updating construction stands in contrast to contemporanea expositio, which reads a statute by reference to the understanding prevailing when it was passed — an approach the courts confine largely to ancient statutes. For modern enactments, the present tense is taken at its word: the law speaks now, and keeps speaking. For the aspirant, the lesson is that tense in a statute is not decorative; it encodes a theory of how long, and how widely, the command reaches.
Tense Discipline in Pleadings, FIRs and Charges
Procedural law expects a particular tense discipline. A First Information Report narrates a completed offence and is therefore properly written in the past simple: "the informant stated that the accused assaulted him." A charge under the criminal procedure framework reproduces the statutory present of the offence-defining section but fixes the particulars in the past: the charge that the accused "on or about 4 March 2024 committed murder" pairs a past-simple act with the present-tense legal label drawn from the section. Plaints in civil suits mix tenses deliberately: the cause of action is narrated in the past ("the defendant failed to pay"), the continuing wrong in the present perfect or present continuous ("the defendant has been wrongfully occupying"), and the relief sought in the future or imperative ("the defendant be directed to deliver possession").
Errors here are not cosmetic. Writing a charge in the present continuous ("is committing murder") suggests an ongoing act and muddles the date the prosecution must prove. Writing a settled finding in the future ("the accused will be guilty") begs the question the judgment must decide. The reviewing judge reads tense as a signal of when each fact is alleged to sit on the timeline, so a drafter who keeps narration in the past, standing rules in the present, and directions in the future or imperative produces a document that is both grammatically and forensically clean.
Managing Tense Shifts in Judgment-Writing
A judgment moves through several tense zones, and the skill lies in shifting between them cleanly. The narration of facts is in the past simple and, where chronology matters, the past perfect ("the appellant had executed the sale deed before the attachment"). The statement of the law is in the present simple, preserving the statutory and precedential present ("Section 34 requires common intention"; "this Court has held that..."). The analysis often uses the present ("the evidence shows") to give the reasoning immediacy, while the operative directions use the future or imperative ("the appeal is allowed"; "the respondent shall pay costs").
The cardinal rule is consistency within each zone and a deliberate, signalled shift between them. Drifting from past to present mid-narration, or backshifting a live statement of law into the past, signals carelessness and can obscure whether the court is recounting evidence or pronouncing a conclusion. When a judgment reports a witness's words, the sequence-of-tenses rule applies, with the exception for statements of law preserved: "the witness said that he had seen the accused" (backshift), but "the witness said that the document bears his signature" if that fact is treated as continuingly true. Tense control, in short, is part of judicial reasoning made visible.
Conditionals: Tense in Hypothetical and Counterfactual Reasoning
Legal reasoning is saturated with conditionals, and each conditional type has its own tense pattern. The zero conditional (present + present) states a legal rule of general application: "if a person causes death with intent, he commits culpable homicide." The first conditional (present + future) states a real future contingency: "if the respondent fails to deposit, the decree shall be executed." These two are the bread and butter of statutory drafting and directions.
The second conditional (past simple + would) frames a present or future hypothetical: "if the notice were defective, the proceedings would be void." The third conditional (past perfect + would have) is counterfactual about the past — the tense of judicial "but for" causation: "if the doctor had administered the antidote, the patient would not have died." Courts reason in the third conditional whenever they test causation or prejudice ("had the document been disclosed, the result would have been different"). Mastering the past perfect / would-have pairing is therefore not abstract grammar; it is the tense in which the law of causation and of curable irregularity is written. The conditional also depends on correct linking words, which is why a firm grasp of prepositions and conjunctions supports clean conditional drafting.
Common Tense Errors and Exam Strategy
Examiners reward tense control and punish a handful of recurring errors. First, the unwarranted backshift of a statement of law: writing that a live section "defined" rather than "defines" an offence. Second, tense drift in narration: sliding from past to present within a single account of facts. Third, misuse of the present perfect with a definite past time: "the accused has fired the shot on 4 March" is wrong — a stated past time demands the simple past ("fired"). Fourth, confusing past simple and past perfect when ordering events, which can invert a chronology. Fifth, treating "shall" as merely future when context makes it mandatory or prohibitory.
In précis and translation, preserve the tense of the source unless idiom forbids it; in judgment-writing exercises, keep narration past, law present, directions future. A reliable self-check is to ask, for every verb, "when is this act located, and is it complete?" — the answer dictates time and aspect. Build the habit by reading bare provisions and judgments aloud and noting which tense each clause uses and why.
A practical exam tactic is to scan a passage for the three tense "zones" — narration, rule, and direction — and confirm each is internally consistent before worrying about anything else. Most marks lost on tense come not from exotic forms but from inconsistency: a single present-tense verb stranded in a past-tense narrative, or a future-tense conclusion where a past-tense finding belongs. Fixing those structural slips first yields the biggest return. Tense rarely fails in isolation; it usually surfaces alongside agreement and voice slips, so pair this revision with subject-verb agreement and return to the English for Judiciary hub to see how the grammar topics interlock across the syllabus.
Frequently asked questions
How many tenses are there in English, and what is the simplest way to remember them?
English has twelve tenses, built from three times (past, present, future) and four aspects (simple, continuous, perfect, perfect continuous). Remember the grid: take each time and apply each aspect — for example present simple (writes), present continuous (is writing), present perfect (has written), present perfect continuous (has been writing) — then repeat for past and future. Learning the auxiliary-plus-participle formula for each cell fixes all twelve.
Why are penal sections and statutory commands written in the present tense?
Statutes are cast in the present indefinite ("whoever commits," "the Court may") so that the command applies continuously to every occasion as it arises, rather than to a single past event. This is the "omnitemporal" or statutory present. It also underlies the always-speaking doctrine, under which a provision is read as if re-enacted on the day it is applied.
What is the 'always speaking' doctrine and which Indian case illustrates it?
The doctrine treats a statute as continuously operating, so its present-tense language captures developments the legislature never foresaw. In Senior Electric Inspector v. Laxminarayan Chopra, AIR 1962 SC 159, the Supreme Court read "telegraph line" — derived from the Indian Telegraph Act, 1885 — widely enough to include wireless transmission, holding that statutes are ordinarily construed as ongoing and as embracing scientific advances within their general words.
What is the sequence-of-tenses rule and its main exception?
When the main clause is in the past, subordinate clauses generally shift their tense backwards (present to past, will to would) — the basis of converting direct to indirect speech. The key exception is that universal truths and statements of law keep the present: "the Court held that Section 300 defines murder," not "defined," because the provision still defines it. Backshifting a live legal statement wrongly implies it has been repealed.
Which tense should an FIR, a charge, and a judgment's narration of facts use?
An FIR narrates a completed offence and uses the past simple ("the accused assaulted"). A charge pairs the present-tense statutory label with past-simple particulars ("on 4 March committed murder"). A judgment's narration of facts uses the past simple, and the past perfect where chronology matters ("had executed the deed before the attachment"), while the statement of law stays in the present and directions take the future or imperative.
How do conditionals use tense in legal reasoning?
Each conditional has a fixed pattern. Zero (present + present) states rules; first (present + future) states real contingencies; second (past simple + would) frames present hypotheticals; and the third (past perfect + would have) is counterfactual about the past — the tense of "but for" causation, as in "had the antidote been given, the patient would not have died." Courts reason in the third conditional whenever they test causation or prejudice.