Equality: Legislative Review under Article 14

Abstract

This chapter provides an analytical overview and limited evaluation of the grounds of legislative review under the general constitutional guarantee of the right to equality under Article 14. It explores the two doctrines that have evolved to test the constitutionality of a measure when faced with an Article 14 challenge: the ‘classification test’ or the ‘old doctrine’ (which I have labelled ‘unreasonable comparison’) and the ‘arbitrariness test’ or the ‘new doctrine’ (labelled ‘non- comparative unreasonableness’). I will show that (a) the classification test (or the unreasonable comparison test) continues to be applied for testing the constitutionality of classificatory rules (whether or not..