Judicial precedents

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  • Created by: Han <3
  • Created on: 16-02-14 14:19

Judicial precedents

Advantages

  • Certainty : The supreme court practice statement 1966 states how important certainty is in the law, because the courts follow previous decision people therefore know what the law is and what it is on and how it will be applied in their case, lawyers can then inform their clients of the likely outcome of the case.
  • Flexibility: There is also room for the law to change as the supreme court can use the practice statement 1966 to overrule cases and also gives the courts some freedom to avoid past decisions and develop the law.
  • Consistency: It is seen in judicial precedent that similar cases should be decided in a similar way.
  • Precision : As the principle of the law is set out in cases the law therefore becomes very precise and reliable.
  • Time saving: Precedent is seen to be a useful time saving device, where a principle has been established cases with similar facts are likely to go through the expensive lengthy process of the courts.

Disadvantages

  • Rigid: The fact that the lower courts in the hierarchy are bound to the higher courts/superior courts and the fact that the COA has to follow its past decisions can make the law too inflexible meaning that bad decisions are therefore made in the past may be repeated for future cases. When a law has been laid it has been set in stone and becomes binding which means there is little room for flexibility.
  • Complex: Judgements are very long and its hard to separate the ratio and the obiter statements. Unfortunately there are thousands of cases which means that there are several indicate distinctions in each.
  • Illogical decisions: Distinguishing cause areas to be complex even if facts are not that different.
  • The research process can be tedious and time consuming.
  • Slowness of growth: Not only are cases complex, but there are hundreds of cases each year meaning this makes it very difficult for relevant precedents to be handed out to the right case.

Evaluation

Overall there are many advantages and disadvantages to JP. 

Comments

ZeroHeart66

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Your evaluation is more of a statement than a proper evaluation. 

Grace455

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Do you have an example for the illogical decisions point?

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