When Can Doctrine Of Prospective Overruling Be Applied? Supreme Court Explains

The Supreme Court in its recent judgment allowing retrospective application of its decision on July 25 upholding the powers of the States to tax mineral rights and mineral-bearing lands, analyzed the principles for applying the doctrine of prospective overruling.Chief Justice of India, Dr. DY Chandrachud, while authoring the judgment on behalf of the 9-judge bench (8:1 majority), explained when the doctrine could be applied by the Supreme Court. The Court explained that the doctrine of prospective overruling means that an old well-established principle of law is overruled and the new legal principle would validly be applicable for all future instances. The intent of the doctrine is to avoid any injustice or hardships for the parties or individuals upon whom such a doctrine applies. “The doctrine of prospective overruling is applied when a constitutional court overrules a well-established precedent by declaring a new rule but limits its application to future situations. The underlying objective is to avert injustice or hardships.” The Top Court noted that the genesis of the doctrine can be found in the American Jurisprudence. In Chevron Oil Company v. Huson the US Supreme Court laid down 3 aspects to determine the applicability of the doctrine:(1) there should exist a new legal principle which overrules the old precedent; (2) the Court shall analyze the merits and demerits of each case where the doctrine is to be applied by understanding the previous history of the law in question, the objective, effect of the law and if allowing retrospective application would impact the law; (3) if the application of the doctrine is needed to avoid substantial injustice or inequitable results and hardships.Adoption Of The Doctrine Of Prospective Overruling In India : Principles Laid Down In Golak Nath v. State of Punjab The Supreme Court for the first time adopted the US doctrine in the 1967 judgment in Golaknath v. State of Punjab. In the said case, the validity of the Constitution (Seventeenth Amendment) Act 1964 was challenged. It may be noted that the amendments included certain state agrarian laws in the Ninth Schedule of the Constitution. The Court therein held that the constitutional amendment in question was declared void for violating Article 13(2). It also ruled that constitutional amendments were subject to the limitation set by Article 13(2) and therefore cannot infringe fundamental rights of individuals. The court then had to decide whether to apply this ruling only to future cases or to past ones as well. CJI Chandrachud in his analysis observed that this decision was crucial because (1) The Golak Nath ruling overturned previous decisions that had allowed Parliament to change fundamental rights; (2) States had relied on these earlier rulings to make laws about land reforms; (3) Many changes had been made to the Constitution between 1950 and 1967 to support these reforms. The Doctrine of Prospective Overruling was adopted in the present instance, as the then CJI K Subba Rao noted that allowing a retrospective application of the decision would create chaos and upset the country's stability considering that many State agrarian laws were enforced by relying on the overruled precedents. He suggested that making the ruling apply only to future cases was a sensible way to handle this tricky situation.“In this context, Chief Justice K Subba Rao observed that giving retrospective operation to the decision “would introduce chaos and unsettle the conditions in our country.” Resultantly, it was observed that overruling the earlier decisions but restricting the ruling to the future and not to the past was a “reasonable principle” to resolve extraordinary situations.” The Court further observed that the doctrine of prospective overruling can be applied under the Supreme Court's special powers to do complete justice under Article 142. The court outlined three main rules for using prospective overruling in India: (1) It can only be used for matters related to the Constitution; (2) Only the Supreme Court can apply this doctrine; (3) The court can decide how far back in time the new ruling should apply. “The Chief Justice held that the power of this Court to apply the doctrine of prospective overruling could be traced to Article 142 and formulated the following propositions about the applicability of the doctrine: a. It can be invoked only in matters arising under the Constitution; b. It can be applied only by this Court as it has the constitutional jurisdiction to declare law binding on all the courts in India; and c. The scope of the retroactive operation of the law is left to the discretion of this Court to be moulded in accordance with the justice of the cause or matter before it.” It may be noted that while the Golaknath decision was subsequently overruled in Kesavananda Bharati v. State of Kerala, the doctrine of prospective overruling has been accepted by this Court. The 7 Key Principles To Apply The Doctrine : CJI...

When Can Doctrine Of Prospective Overruling Be Applied? Supreme Court Explains

Anmol Kaur Bawa

Tags