Manifesting the Consistency in the Application of ‘Manifest Arbitrariness Doctrine’

Abstract

Manifest Arbitrariness Doctrine is perhaps the most important legal development of the decade for India. It is a standard that includes anything done by the legislature capriciously, irrationally and/or without adequate determining principle, excessively or disproportionately. It is being increasingly used to strike down plenary legislation under Article 14. However, there is no clarity on its application, and no literature addressing the same. Without this clarity, law-makers may inadvertently pass legislations that fail the test; and adjudicators may fail to determine when the legislations fail the test. More importantly, the Doctrine may empower judges to substitute legislative wisdom for their own. This paper alleviates these concerns by finding consistency in its application while restricting the scope of judicial scrutiny. By employing the framework of “Rules versus Standard”, this paper analyses six instances of application of the Doctrine and develops a four-step test. It evinces that the Doctrine has been used in a restrictive sense to strike down plenary legislation only when first, the legislation in question is a rule as against a standard; second, it is overinclusive/underinclusive; third, due to overinclusive/underinclusive nature, it yields socially undesirable results; and fourth, these socially undesirable results are worse than the competing social results.