Trending: ‘capricious’

Capricious topped our site lookups on June 18, 2020, after the Supreme Court decided that President Trump cannot end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program without giving a substantive reason for doing so:

While the agency was not required to pursue these accommodations, it was required to assess the existence and strength of any reliance interests, and weigh them against competing policy concerns. Its failure to do so was arbitrary and capricious.

In legal contexts like this one, capricious means:

: not supported by the weight of evidence or established rules of law

Capricious derives from caprice, which means "a sudden, impulsive, and seemingly unmotivated notion or action."

It derives ultimately from the Italian word capriccio ("caprice," "shudder"), which perhaps was formed from combining capo ("head") and riccio ("hedgehog"). The image here is of a head with hair standing on end, hence the idea of "shivering" like a whim, moving without motivation.

The phrase "arbitrary and capricious" is used in legal language, especially in administrative law, for a standard of review.