Important Legal Definitions
Explore legal terms, clear definitions and practical examples.
Overruled Judgment
Judicial Orders, Injunctions & Precedents
Definition
A judgment whose legal principle (ratio decidendi) has been authoritatively stripped of all precedential force and declared bad law by a subsequent decision of a superior court or a larger bench of the same court.
Example
The landmark Constitution Bench in Justice K.S. Puttaswamy (2017) expressly overruled the earlier decisions in M.P. Sharma (1954) and Kharak Singh (1962) to the extent they held that privacy was not a Fundamental Right.