Jurisprudence Notes - Supreme Court of India on Ratio decidendi

Important Supreme Court Cases

1. Krishena Kumar & another v. Union of India & Others[1] - The ratio decidendi has to be ascertained by an analysis of the facts of the case and the process of reasoning involving the major premise consisting of a pre-existing rule of law, either statutory or judge-made, and a minor premise consisting of the material facts of the case under immediate consideration. If it is not clear, it is not the duty of the court to spell it out with difficulty in order to be bound by it.

Therefore, we find that it is the ratio decidendi which is a binding precedent. The other material part of a judgment is the Obiter Dictum. However, in the present article we are not concerned with it.

2. State of Orissa v. Sudhanshu Shekhar Mishra[2] - A decision is only an authority for what it actually decides. What is of the essence in a decision is its ratio and not every observation found therein nor what logically follows from the various observations made in it.

3. Dalveer Singh v. State of Punjab[3] - Even where the direct facts of an earlier case appear to be identical to those of the case before the Court, the Judge is not bound to draw the same inference as drawn in the earlier case.

4. Fazlunbi v. K. Khader Vali & Another[4] - Precedents of the Supreme Court are not to be left on the shelves. Neither could they be brushed aside saying that precedents is an authority only “on its actual facts”. Such devices are not permissible for the High Court when decisions of the Supreme Court are cited before them not merely because of the jurisprudence of precedents, but because of the imperatives of Article 141.

5. A.R. Antulay v. R.S. Nayak & Another[5] - Per incuriam are those decisions given in ignorance or forgetfulness of some inconsistent statutory provision or some authority binding on the Court concerned so that in such cases some part of the decision or some step in the reasoning on which it is based is found, on that account to be demonstrably wrong. If a decision is given per incuriam, the Court can ignore it.

6. Arnit Das v. State of Bihar[6] - A decision not expressed, not accompanied by reasons and not proceeding on conscious consideration of an issue cannot be deemed to be a law declared to have a binding effect as is contemplated by Article 141. That which has escaped in the judgment is not ratio decidendi in the technical sense when a particular point of law was not consciously determined (this is the rule of sub-silentio).

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Complete List of Jurisprudence Notes 

1. Jurisprudence- Nature and Scope of Jurisprudence

2. Jurisprudence- The Nature of Law

3. Jurisprudence- Administration of Justice

4. Jurisprudence- The Sources of Law

A. Maxwell on Interpretation

B. Interpretative Process

C. Ratio decidendi

D. Supreme Court on ratio decidendi

5. Jurisprudence- Legal Concepts

6. Jurisprudence- School of Thoughts

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[1] AIR 1990 SC 1782.

[2] AIR 1968 SC 647.

[3] 1979 3 SCC 745.

[4] AIR 1980 SC 1730.

[5] AIR 1988 SC 1531.

[6] AIR 2000 SC 2264.