What is the meaning of Sui Generis?

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Important Judicial Precedents

Paramjit Kaur v. State of Punjab, (1999) 2 SCC 131 –

In this case, it was observed that the concept of sui generis is applied generously in the adjudication of disputes related to International Law to ascertain whether a particular law or a treaty covers “any area territorially or any subject topically” or not. If not, the adjudicating body devises its sui generis or “one of a kind” method to resolve such disputes. The Court, while delving on the question that whether the National Human Rights Commission of India (NHRC) is a sui generis body or not, in respect of a task assigned to it, namely, to look into flagrant human rights violations in a particular matter, opined that the NHRC became a sui generis body as soon as the Supreme Court directed it by way of a Judicial Order to carry out certain tasks at its behest. Thus, to carry out those certain tasks, the NHRC did not require any jurisdiction to be conferred on it from any statute or that any statute could not have limited its jurisdiction to carry out those tasks and could have acted sui generis that is in a unique manner in order to fulfil the task assigned to it.

Rajendra v. State of Maharashtra – (2021) 2 Mah LJ 457 –

In this case, the Court was looking into question of “what could be a small and what could be a large gathering.” According to the Court, the general classifications of gatherings like funerals and marriages have nothing in common and are of entirely different character and hence, the principle of sui generis could have no applicability in such certain circumstances where each situation (gathering) is of a different character and there could be no straight-jacket formula to make specific classifications. A marriage or a funeral could have a small gathering or a large gathering, depend upon a number of factors. Same is true for any general species of public gatherings.

Therefore, we see that the concept of sui generis has no applicability in situations where no specific categorization exists and that its applicability is limited to identify the uniqueness of an object from a large set where a precise taxonomy exists. This could be a reason that it is used heavily in academic literature.

K.C. Vasanth Kumar v. State of Karnataka, 1985 Supp SCC 714 –

In this case, the Hon’ble Supreme Court explained the sui generis status of the Constitution of India. According to the Court, Constitution of India is inherently sui generis since it is born in specific circumstances. It has a geography, history, economics etc. different from other countries and does not fit into a water-tight compartmentalization. Therefore, it would be utterly improper to apply the general rules of statutory interpretation to interpret it.

The Court asserted that even our Indian Constitution Makers were not concerned merely with the words and their arrangement in the Constitution, rather their emphasis was on “the philosophy and the pervading “spirit and sense” of the Constitution, so elaborately exposed for our guidance in the Directive Principles of State Policy and other provisions of the Constitution.”

Therefore, in this context, sui generis would mean the specific nature of the Constitution of India and that there is no classification where the Constitution of India could fit necessitating adoption of a sui generis approach for its i...