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Advantages
- Consistent decision making due to reference to other cases, for example R V Gotts used the obiter dicta from R v Howe, holding that the defence of duress was not available for attempted murder. This leads to fair decisions and no bias.
- Original precedents are created due to a lack of previous precedent to refer to, therefore they allow the law to keep up to date with advancements in society and technology. For example, Donoghue v Stevenson created original precedent for negligence.
- Certainty, so lawyers and clients can see if their case will be hopeless or not based on previous results, therefore saving money.
- Time-saving, as a principle has been established in a previous case, such as the ratio decidendi (the decision), so similar cases can avoid the long process of litigation.
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Disadvantages
- Judicial precedent is complex, therefore it is hard to extract ratio decidendi, the decision of a case. For example, in R v Brown, the ratio decidendi is on Page 14. This can lead to slow and lengthy processes.
- Rigid, as the Court of Appeal is bound by its own decisions and the lower courts are bound by higher courts. Avoiding precedent lead to needed change to match the treatment of women in society and the view on **** in marriages in R v R. Therefore old and outdated law can still persist by following precedent and law isn't developing to match societal changes.
- The retrospective effect - laws are made to operate on a subject or crime which existed before. This creates unjust decisions for people who did things that were lawful at the time.
- Judges can avoid precedents using several methods. Therefore the use of judicial precedent isn't always predictable.
- Slowness of growth - only about 50 cases go to the Supreme Court each year and the Court of Appeal has to follow its own decisions. Therefore it may be a long time before a case is appealed up to the Supreme Court which provokes change.
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