Distinguish between appeal and review

Few distinctions in civil procedure are as conceptually important as the one between an appeal and a review. On the surface, both appear to challenge the correctness of a judicial decision. But in truth, they operate on entirely different principles, serve different purposes, and are governed by different provisions of the Code.

The Foundational Difference

An appeal is a continuation of the original proceedings. When a party files an appeal, the entire matter — questions of fact, questions of law, and the justice of the decision — stands open before the appellate court for examination. The appellate court, in a first appeal at least, has full power to re-examine the evidence, reconsider the findings, and arrive at its own conclusion on all aspects of the case. It is, in essence, a rehearing of the dispute by a higher forum.

A review, by contrast, is not a movement of the case to a higher court at all. It is a request made to the same court that decided the matter, asking it to reconsider its own decision. The court hearing the review does not sit in appeal over its own order — a rehearing of the matter in the full sense is impermissible in a review. The scope is deliberately narrow: the review court is asked only to correct a specific, limited category of errors that have come to light after the decision was delivered.

The Forum

This difference in forum is perhaps the starkest distinction. In an appeal, the aggrieved party approaches a higher or superior court. The very idea of an appeal is premised on hierarchy — that a superior court has the authority to examine and correct what a lower court has done. A review, under Section 114 read with Order XLVII, is filed before the very court that passed the decree or order sought to be reviewed. The same judge, ideally, hears the review — and judicial tradition demands that the review application be placed before the same bench if possible.

The Scope of Examination

In a first appeal, the parties have the right to be heard both on questions of law and on questions of fact. The appellate court must independently consider the entire evidence, and where it reverses the trial court's findings, it is bound to give its own reasons. This wide amplitude of examination is the hallmark of appellate jurisdiction.

In a review, the power of re-examination is fundamentally curtailed. The reviewing court cannot undertake a general re-appreciation of the evidence or substitute its judgment for what it had earlier decided. The power of review can be exercised only on specific, prescribed grounds — and the most significant of these is an error apparent on the face of the record: a glaring, patent mistake that does not require elaborate argument to establish and is directly visible from the record itself. Discovery of new evidence that could not have been produced despite due diligence, or a mistake or error apparent on the face of the record, or any other sufficient reason analogous to these, are the grounds contemplated under Order XLVII, Rule 1.

The Nature of the Right

An appeal is a substantive right — conferred by statute and not to be taken away by implication. Once the right of appeal is created, a litigant is entitled to invoke it as a matter of legal entitlement. The right of appeal cannot be defeated merely because the law is subsequently altered, unless the provision is expressly retrospective.

A review, on the other hand, is not a routine or general remedy. It is available only in specific, limited circumstances and is governed by the rule that the power of review must be specifically granted by statute — it cannot be assumed or imported. The review petition is not an appeal in disguise. Courts have repeatedly emphasised that the purpose of a review application cannot be a rehearing for the purpose of saying whether a different conclusion on merits could be adopted. If a party is aggrieved by the judgment of a single judge in a second appeal, a review application is entirely misconceived — the remedy is an appeal, not a review.

The Practical Distinctions at a Glance

The Connecting Thread: What Neither Permits

A review cannot be used to obtain what an appeal would have given. The restriction on review is not merely procedural — it reflects a deep policy consideration. Judicial decisions must attain finality. If every aggrieved party could, at leisure, ask the same court to reconsider its decision on broad grounds, the entire edifice of res judicata and finality of judgments would collapse. The review process, therefore, is confined to the correction of specific, defined errors — not the wholesale reopening of a decided controversy. An appeal, by contrast, is the legitimate vehicle for a comprehensive challenge, and the law ensures that this right is not improperly curtailed by allowing review to be used in its place.