The British House of Lords, as the last court of appeal outside Scotland before being replaced by the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, was not strictly bound to always follow its own decisions until London Street Tramways v. London County Council [1898] AC 375. After that case, after the Lords had made a decision on a point of law, the case was closed unless Parliament made a legislative amendment. This is the strictest form of the doctrine of stare decisis (a doctrine not previously applied in common law countries where there was a little more flexibility for a court of last resort to consider its own precedents). Precedents are an important source of law. They have enjoyed high authority at all times and in all countries. Precedent is an important source of law, especially with respect to the common law system. It should be noted that the common law system has evolved and continues to evolve as a result of judicial precedent. The reason for the decision is an important factor. The explanation and standards by which a court rules in a case structure is a precedent.
Precedents are laws made by judges. Therefore, they are more convenient. They are case-based. It is not like the law of statues, which is based on an a priori theory. The law develops through precedents based on real cases. One precedent is the legal claim discovered in the Supreme Court decision, that the decision must be followed both by themselves and by all lower courts. Judges should carefully follow previous decisions in the cases before them and use them as a manual for all present or future decisions. Thus, precedents serve as a source for future decisions. After this brief discussion of the nature, definitions and authority of precedents, let us move on to the value of precedents in different countries of the world. The brief discussion above shows the role and importance of precedent decisions in legal development and their importance as a source of law at the local and international levels. The doctrine of settled case-law also influences the structure of judicial decisions.
In general, judicial decisions of common law courts provide a sufficient proportion of decidendi to guide future courts. The ratio is used to justify a court decision based on previous case law and to facilitate the use of the decision as a precedent for future cases. On the other hand, in some civil law systems (notably in France), court decisions tend to be extremely short, as they refer only to relevant legislation and codal provisions, and do not go into the details of the ratio decidendi. This is the result of the legislative-positivist view that the court interprets only the intention of the legislature and that a detailed explanation is therefore not necessary. For this reason, ratio decidendi is carried out by jurists (doctrinal writers) who provide the explanations that would be provided in common law jurisdictions by the judges themselves. A case decided by a panel of several judges could lead to a split decision. Although only the majority opinion is considered a precedent, a judge who is in a minority may always publish a dissenting opinion. Common patterns of dissent are as follows: Every developed legal system has a judicial body. The main task of the judiciary is to decide on the rights and obligations of citizens. Initially, the courts oriented themselves in this jurisprudence to customs and their own sense of justice.
As society progresses, legislation becomes the main source of law and judges decide cases accordingly. In this phase too, jurors perform a creative function. In the case of first impressions, in questions of interpretation or in the elimination of a legal vacuum by legislation, judges depend to some extent on their sense of right and wrong, adapting the law to the changed conditions. In determining the relevant jurisdiction, a court is “required” to follow a precedent of that jurisdiction only if it is a direct case. In the strongest sense, the term “direct in the strict sense” means that: (1) the issue resolved in the preceding is identical to the issue to be resolved in the pending case, (2) the resolution of that issue was necessary to decide on the previous one; (3) The essential facts of the precedent are also set out in the pending case and (4) no additional facts appear in the pending case which could be considered relevant. [15] There is a reason to decide a case, whether we understand it or not. It is necessary that the same be followed from now on. Disputes that have been dismissed cannot be resolved, as this would result in a waste of time for the court.
Precedents are based on practice and therefore reflect public opinion. It gives certainty to the law. Although the law establishes certain situations, these precedents take into account factors that cannot be included in the theory. It guides judges to think virtually without prejudice. Some important issues cannot be raised in precedents that could cost a party the case, a lower court cannot overturn the judgment of a higher court. Sometimes the decision itself can be wrong, but not reversed. Precedents guide judges and, as a result, they are prevented from making mistakes that they would have made without precedent. Precedents protect judges from bias, and in part because precedents bind them.
By adjudicating cases according to established principles, public confidence in the judiciary is enhanced. In 1976, Richard Posner and William Landes coined the term “superprecedent” in a paper they wrote about testing the theories of precedents by counting citations. [18] Posner and Landes used this term to describe the influential effect of a cited decision. The term “superprecedent” was then associated with another issue: the difficulty of reversing a decision. [19] In 1992, Rutgers professor Earl Maltz criticized the Supreme Court`s decision in Planned Parenthood v.