My late senior, Mr Amarendra Sharan, made this point better than I can. Over lunch, he would tell stories from court. In one, counsel kept repeating, “My Lord, I am covered by so-and-so judgment.” The bench smiled at first. Then it stopped smiling. The impatience was fair. “I am covered” is not an argument. It is a conclusion. If you cannot say why you are covered and on which facts, you are throwing case names at the court and hoping one lands.
There is an opposite mistake and it is worse, because it looks like hard work. Counsel reasons carefully from the statute and the record, and does not notice that a bench has already decided the very point against him. Arguing principle against a binding judgment is not honesty. It is a polite way of losing. So the question is not whether to reason or to cite. The question is where the line falls.