Judicial Precedent Essay

286 Words2 Pages
The meaning of judicial precedent itself is a judgment of the court used as a starting place for future decision making. It is also known as “stare decisis” which means to stand upon decisions and by which precedents are solid, obligatory and ought to be followed. By giving judgment of some cases, the judge may set out some facts of the case, state the law that is relevant to the facts and then provide his decision. It is only the “ratio decidendi “ which means the legal reasoning or ground for the judicial decision. It is binding on later courts under the system of judicial precedent. Any surveillance will be made by the judge on a legal question suggested by the case before him but not arising in such a manner as requiring a decision is known as “obiter dicta” which means a saying by the way. There may be a number of reasons for a decision provided by the judge in any given judgment and one must not take for granted that a reason can be regarded as 'obiter' because some other 'ratio' has been provided. Thus, it is not always easy to differentiate “ratio decidendi” from “obiter dicta” when evaluating the effects of a finicky decision. Refer back to the question above, is judicial precedent is best understood as a practice of the courts and not as a set of a binding rules? Judicial precedent is considered as an important source of the English Law. Its original precedent is the one which creates and applies a new rule. However, the later decisions, especially of the higher courts, can have a number of effects upon precedents. In particular, they may be reversed, overruled or
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