Judicial Precedent Essay

851 Words4 Pages
Judicial precedent is refer a judgment of a court of law cited as an authority for deciding a similar set of facts; a case which serves as authority for the legal principle embodied in its decision.A judicial precedent is a decision of the court used as the source for future making. This doctrine of the judicial precedent are based on the principle of stare decisis (stand up decision) which where means that all like cases should be treated alike, or I can simply understand as “just follow what already been stated”. Why I said so because the general rules of stare decisis is that all courts are bound by the previous decisions made by the higher hierarchy of the courts. The common law has developed by broadening down from precedent to precedent. When there are no previous judicial decision at the point of law before the court decision made in that case which means that there will be an original precedent. In giving judgment in a case, the judge will set out the facts of the case, state the law applicable to the facts and then provide his or her decision whether the facts of case are similar to the one in question,and at his point of time,these cases are not binding on the court but they are persuasive.A previous decision will be binding(ratio decidendi) if the legal point of the case involved is same,the facts of the current facts are similar to the previous but don’t have to be identical and the decision was made by the higher hierarchy of the court or the same level. While the persuasive precedent(obiter dicta) when there is the dissenting judgment in House of Lords decision,ratios decision in courts lower in the hierarchy and decision from other jurisdiction .only the principles of law that are relevant to the decision are the ratio decidendi of the judgment .any other statements of law that are not relevant to the decision are obiter dicta. In particular,
Open Document