Dicey's rule of law doctrine holds that no one is above the law, equality before law must prevail, and constitutional rights flow from judicial decisions rather than government grants. Administrative law grows directly from this foundation by subjecting executive action to legal scrutiny. Indian courts have used this relationship to strike arbitrary state action under Articles 14, 19, and 21. The NALSA judgment on transgender rights reinforced that rule of law demands equal legal recognition regardless of identity.

The rule of law, as formulated by A.V. Dicey in 1885, rests on three pillars: (1) supremacy of law — no punishment except for a breach of established law; (2) equality before law — every person, including government officials, is subject to the ordinary courts; and (3) the constitution is a consequence of individual rights, not their source.

Administrative law is the direct institutional response to Dicey's second pillar. As the state expanded its welfare functions in the 20th century, executive agencies multiplied. Administrative law developed to ensure these agencies acted within their statutory powers (intra vires), followed natural justice, and did not exercise arbitrary discretion. This is where Dicey's model shows its limits: he distrusted French-style droit administratif (separate administrative courts), yet the complexity of modern governance forced India to develop specialised administrative tribunals under Article 323-A and 323-B.

In India, the rule of law operates through several constitutional guarantees. Article 14 (equality before law and equal protection), Article 21 (right to life and liberty), and Article 32/226 (judicial review) collectively operationalise Dicey's principles. The Supreme Court in NALSA v. Union of India (2014) extended this logic: denying legal recognition to transgender persons violated the rule of law because it placed them outside the equal protection of law — precisely the inequality Dicey's second pillar was designed to eliminate.

The critical tension for the examiner: administrative discretion is necessary for governance, but uncanalised discretion is antithetical to the rule of law. The test Indian courts apply is whether the discretion is guided by intelligible differentia with a rational nexus to the object — the Article 14 doctrine of reasonable classification.