Functus Officio

Detailed Meaning

Functus officio (Latin: "having performed the office") describes a court, tribunal, or arbitrator that has fully and finally discharged its function in a matter and has thereby lost jurisdiction to revisit, alter, or reopen its own decision. The doctrine is most frequently invoked in arbitration: once an arbitral tribunal signs and delivers a final award, it generally becomes functus officio and cannot reconsider the merits, subject to the narrow correction/interpretation power given to it under Section 33 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 (correcting clerical, computational, or typographical errors, or giving an interpretation of a specific part of the award, on a party's request within 30 days). The same principle applies to courts and other adjudicating authorities that have passed a final order or decree — they cannot themselves reopen it absent a specific statutory power of review, recall, or correction (such as review under Section 114 read with Order XLVII of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908, or correction of a clerical/arithmetical error under Section 152 CPC).