The term arbitrary is used mostly as a qualifying adjective to account for that person who at a certain moment, or as a characteristic of their way of being, acts unfairly or motivated exclusively by their whims.
Individual who acts unfairly and usually motivated by their own interests
And also, what results from this behavior will be called arbitrary.
“Juan was very arbitrary not letting his youngest daughter go out on the weekend because his older sister misbehaved. The decision of the management to prevent us from attending work in pants is really arbitrary.”
Fair versus unfair actions
Human beings usually develop or embody decisions that may be valued, on the one hand, as arbitrary, unfair, and on the other as fair.
If the decision we have made is characterized by its balance and fairness, then we will speak in terms of a fair decision. While on the contrary, if the decision we make arises from an outburst, from a whim, without thinking in the least about others but about our interests, then there we can speak of an arbitrary action.
For example, this sense of the term is normally used as a synonym for unfair.
We must say that it is a concept to which an absolutely negative connotation is attributed, since when someone is told that it is arbitrary, or something that it does, it is, the common people interpret it as selfish, and then it ends being beaten and considered as someone not very permeable, unlovable and obviously will suffer discrimination from people, and much more if this is a characteristic and repetitive behavior in him.
Although those who are responsible for making decisions are usually in the storm's eye and are watched more for that situation, since everyone expects them to act correctly and with balance, there is a profession that mostly captures this attention: judges.
The administration of justice does not admit arbitrariness
Those who have the duty to impart justice like judges must be impartial, that is what the law requires, they must free themselves of their prejudices and preconceptions in order to be as fair as possible in the decisions they must make, since in many cases it depends on the guilt or innocence of someone, jail and freedom, respectively.
The same can be transferred to teachers, who must be fair and not arbitrary when evaluating their students, the police, when arresting people, and referees at the behest of sports competitions must also show great balance and fairness when making decisions not to favor or harm teams.
One condition that must be observed by the person who has to make decisions, especially when they concern third parties, is objectivity, if it goes hand in hand with it, there is no risk of falling into arbitrariness.
The conventional agreed by several people
And on the other hand, to that conventional, that was agreed between several people is called arbitrary, “the linguistic sign is arbitrary.”
Arbitrary Code and Arbitrary Agreement
On the other hand, in Computer science is called Arbitrary Code to code that cannot be interpreted by an application or directly by the operating system in question.
And the Arbitrary Agreement It is a document that was created in a timely manner by the King Pedro II of Valencia, better known as the ceremonious, with the objective of end the disputes between the Castellón towns of Villareal, Burriana, Almazora and Castellón de la Plana, for the distribution of waters of the Mijares river.
The arbitrary agreement establishes that the aforementioned localities will enjoy the waters of the river according to the orchards they had compared to a standard garden. The aforementioned agreement is currently in force although it has undergone some modifications with respect to the original one proposed by Pedro II.
