Judicial Precedent basics

Question 1

What does Judicial Precedent mean?

Answer 1

points of law by senior courts that are followed by lower courts when the same point of law arises.

Question 2

What is Judicial precedent based on? What does it mean?

Answer 2

It is based on the principle of Stare Decisis.
Stare Decisis means that similar cases are decided in a similar way.

Question 3

How does the Heirarchy of the courts follow?

Answer 3

Supreme court
↓
CoA -(Civil + Criminal)
↓
Divisional courts (Chancery and Family + KBD)
↓↓
High court (Ci) + Crown (Cr)
↓↓
County Court + Magistrates

Question 4

Why are the lower courts not bound by themselves?

Answer 4

• Points of law should be decided by senior judges.
• The quantity of cases would make this absurd

Question 5

Explain Ratio Decidendi

Answer 5

• Reason for deciding
• This contains a point of law which sets a precedent that all lower courts have to follow in future similar cases.

E.G.
R v Howe - D was made to murder someone. He did this under duress. The ratio given at the end of the case was that “Duress cannot be defence to murder”

Question 6

Explain Obiter Dicta

Answer 6

• Other things said
• Everything else in the judgement (other than the verdict) in this the judge may speculate as to what the decision would have been if the facts of the case had been different. **Obiter is Persuasive **

**E.G. **
R v Howe gave the Obiter that duress shouldn’t be defence to attempted murder. **R v Gotts **decided to follow this Obiter making it a ratio.