Precedent
Precedent is a legal principle that involves judges relying on previous rulings to make decisions in current cases. When judges encounter new cases with factual similarities to earlier ones, they seek to apply the same legal rules established by those earlier decisions. This is particularly important in interpreting laws that may be ambiguous or not explicitly detailed, such as constitutional provisions or statutory laws. For example, judges must determine how historic laws apply to modern contexts, which may include technologies or societal dynamics not anticipated at the time of the law's creation.
Through the use of precedent, judges create a body of common law that establishes legal standards for future cases, ensuring consistency in the judicial process. However, precedents are only binding within the jurisdiction where they were established, meaning a ruling in one state may not influence a case in another. While precedents contribute to the stability of the law, they can be overturned by new statutes or through subsequent judicial decisions. The significance of precedent lies in its ability to shape legal interpretations and promote uniformity while allowing for the evolution of the law in response to changing societal values and needs.
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Precedent
SIGNIFICANCE: When judges see factual similarities between current cases and earlier cases, they look for rules of law on which the earlier cases were based and apply them to their present cases.
Much law is written in terms that do not lend themselves to a single, unequivocal interpretation. For example, the First Amendment to the US Constitution states that “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech.” However, because the authors of the Bill of Rights did not anticipate the invention of radio and television, contemporary judges must decide whether electronic communications broadcasts over the airwaves are a form of “speech.”
When judges confront such ambiguous situations for the first time, they apply the written Constitution according to what they consider just principles. In doing so they effectively fill in the blank spaces in the document. In that sense they are actually making constitutional law. Because judges are bound to follow established law when they make decisions, all judges in similar cases in the future must follow the precedent established in the earlier case.
Law made by legislatures—called “statutory law”—is often characterized by the same ambiguity. When the US Congress passed the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890, the Supreme Court had to decide whether the law’s prohibition of “every contract, combination . . . or conspiracy in restraint of trade or commerce” made union-organized strikes illegal. In Loewe v. Lawlor (1908) the Court said that a union strike was such an illegal restraint of trade. This decision prompted Congress to amend the antitrust law six years later to exempt union activity from its coverage.
US legislators do not write laws to cover every conceivable circumstance. If judges find that there simply is no applicable statute, they must make a decision in the case on the basis of their understanding of justice. Such judge-made law is called common law and is found in judges’ written decisions. Once a judge has made a common-law decision, the decision carries the force of law, and other judges must apply the principle in deciding future cases.
A precedent is binding only in the jurisdiction in which it has been decided. Thus, if a Maine court decides that an optometrist’s failure to test for glaucoma constitutes negligence, that decision does not bind a Mississippi judge. When it comes to federal constitutional and statutory law, the US Supreme Court’s interpretations govern the entire country.
It is possible to overturn a precedent. Common law can be overruled by a statute. A court’s interpretation of a statute may be overruled by a subsequent statute. A court may overrule itself but rarely does so. A precedent may or may not be a good law, but as former US Supreme Court Justice Harlan Fiske Stone said, “It is often more important that a rule of law be settled than that it be settled right.”
Bibliography
Amar, Akhil Reed. The Constitution and Criminal Procedure: First Principles. New Haven: Yale UP, 1997. Print.
Burge, Mark Edwin. "Without Precedent: Legal Analysis in the Age of Non-Judicial Dispute Resolution." Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution 15.1 (2013): 143–91. Print.
Hitt, Matthew P. "Measuring Precedent in a Judicial Hierarchy." Law & Society Review 50.1 (2016): 57–81. Print.
Meyer, J. F., and D. R. Grant. The Courts in Our Criminal Justice System. Upper Saddle River: Prentice, 2003. Print.
Neubauer, D. W. America’s Courts and the Criminal Justice System. 7th ed. Belmont: Wadsworth, 2002. Print.
Sebastian, Lewis. "Towards a General Practice of Precedent." Jurisprudence, vol. 14, no. 2, 2023, pp. 202-220, doi.org/10.1080/20403313.2022.2145795. Accessed 9 July 2024.
Solanki, Sneha. "What Is a Legal Precedent? Definition and Case Law Resources." Thomson Reuters Legal Solutions, 15 Mar. 2023, legal.thomsonreuters.com/blog/what-is-a-legal-precedent-definition-and-case-law-resources/. Accessed 9 July 2024.