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THE DOCTRINE OF JUDICIAL PRECEDENT / STARE DECISIS, There are two types of…
THE DOCTRINE OF JUDICIAL PRECEDENT / STARE DECISIS
DEFINITION:
A precedent is commonly defined as a judgment or decision of a court of law cited as an authority for the legal principle embodied in its decision.
When deciding a case, a judge is subject to the rule of stare decisis i.e. to stand by cases already decided i.e. follows principles which have already been in existence in previously decided case if judge fails to follow a binding precedent the decision will be legally wrong.
APPLICATION OF DOCTRINE:
Judges make laws in two ways:
Applying an established rule on principle to a new situation on a set of facts
Interpreting statutes enacted by the legislature
TWO MAIN FACTORS WHICH INFLUENCED THE DECISIONS OF THE JUDGES:
The origin of the precedent to be binding, a precedent must originate from a court of appropriate rank in the same hierarchy
The contents of the precedent, that is the ratio decidendi which is the legal reasoning. It is the legal reasoning of the precedent that is binding.
There are two types of precedent which is original precedent and Declaratory precedent
Original precedent
Original precedent is a new made law or can be conclude as cases that never occurred before.
When new cases in occur, the court will make the judgment and decision, then that decision will be used in future cases if there are the cases with similar circumstances.
The decision can be used for the future cases to decide if the same matter arises
Declaratory precedent
Declaratory precedent is a previous cases or decisions that may be taken as an example for deciding if the same matter and circumstances arise again.
When there are the cases that need the judgment, the judges will analyze the cases and will refer the case with the case that already happened before.
From the previous cases, the judges will make a judgment and can predict the cases based on decision in previous cases.