Reasonableness - Definition - Law Dictionary Home Dictionary Definition reasonableness

Definition :

Reasonableness, 'reasonableness' as the test of validity is not the courts own standard of reasonableness as it might conceive it in a given situation. A thing is not unreasonable in the legal sense merely because the court thinks it is unwise. Different contexts in which the operative of 'reasonableness' as test of validity operates must be kept distinguished. Some phrases which pass from one branch of law to another carry over with them meanings that may be inapposite in the changed context. Some such thing has happened to the words 'reasonable', 'reasonableness' etc. The reasonableness in administrative law must distinguish between proper use and improper abuse of power. The administrative law test of 'reasonableness' as the touchstone of validity of the impugned resolutions is different from the test of the 'reasonable man' familiar to the law of torts, whom English law figuratively identifies as the 'man on the Clapham omnibus'. In the latter case the standards of the 'reasonable man', to the extent such a 'reasonable man' is court's creation, is in a manner of saying, a mere transferred epithet. Yet another area of reasonableness which must be distinguished is the constitutional standards of 'reasonableness' of the restrictions on the fundamental rights of which the court of judicial review is the arbiter, G.B. Mahajan v. Jalgaon Municipal Council, AIR 1991 SC 1153: (1991) 3 SCC 91: (1990) Supp 3 SCR 20.

Reasonableness, does not exclude notions of morality and ethics. The considerations of morality and ethics may have a bearing on the reasonableness of the law in question, R.K. Garg v. Union of India, 1982 SCC (Tax) 30.