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IMPORTANCE OF PRECEDENTS
IMPORTANCE OF PRECEDENTS
Every developed legal system possesses a judicial organ. The judicial organ’s main function is to adjudicate the rights and obligations of the citizens. In the beginning, in this adjudication, the courts are guided by customs and their own sense of justice. Later on, legislation becomes the main source of law and the judges decide cases according to it.
There are two methods:-
- Inductive method- A great reliance placed upon the decisions of the judges in this method. The judges look into previously decided cases before giving a final judgement, of a similar nature by their own court or by the superior court. They conclude general rules from the previous case and apply them on the cases before them. They then decide accordingly. This is known as the Inductive method.
- Deductive method- In this method, a great reliance is placed on legislatures and enacted statutes. In such a system, the cases are decided on the basis of the enacted legislation and statute that are codified and the judges decide cases on the basis of these codes. Here the judges do not decide on the basis of previously decided cases.
Almost in every legal system, the judges look into the previous decisions on the point, and depend on them. The authority of such decisions is not the same everywhere. In some countries such as India, they get the knowledge of law through decisions of higher tribunals than from anything else. The decisions of previous cases are compiled and published in reports. From the legal literature perspective these reports are considered to be very valuable. In future, these decisions will be very efficient to decide cases of similar nature. This is called judicial precedents or precedents.
The nature of precedents are:-
- A law can be made by the judicial decision but a law cannot be altered by the judicial decision.
- There is a duty to the judges to settle the rules of law.
- The opinions cannot be substituted by the judges for the established rule of law.
Precedents are Judge made laws making them more practical. Precedents are based on cases, it is not like statute law which is based on a priori theory. But the demerit is that the doctrine of precedent is the development of the law depending on the incidents of litigation. It is possible that the most important points may remain not legally settled because nobody brought an action upon them.
A binding precedent is a precedent that must be followed by all lower courts under common law legal systems. Binding precedent depends on the legal principle of stare decisis. A stare decisis means to stand by things decided. There are cases which involve questions which admit of being answered on principles. The reason for the decision, which is called Ratio Decidendi, is the only thing that is binding to similar cases in future. The judge’s opinions which are not relevant in deciding cases of similar nature are called Obiter Dictum. Therefore to conclude, a precedent is a judge made law of which only the Ratio Decidendi is binding and Obiter Dictum is not binding.
