definition of doctrine of precedence?

Answer 1

An issue once decided should form the basis for future rulings by that court and by lower courts.

Answer 2

Since the beginning, courts have had the job of interpreting laws and ruling on specific issues. Every time a court case is cited for a particular rule, that's an application of the Common Law.

Both the Australian and US legal systems are derived from the English Common Law. Under this model, the legislature writes prospective general laws, based around expectations and future events, and the courts interpret those laws to specific situations and applications by resolving specific controversies when they arise.

Those rulings that arise out of specific cases and controversies are called common law. Every time a court case is cited for a particular rule, that's an application of the Common Law. All of torts for example, as well as most of American criminal procedure, primarily are based on common law, rather than legislative statute.

Why do those rulings have any effect on later cases? Because of the doctrines of Precedence and "stare decisis" (literally, "let the decision stand"). The rulings of courts have value in later cases to ensure that the same set of facts achieves the same outcome. That's why cases have precedent value. And that's really the only way the legal system can work. Can you imagine what the legal system would be like if every judge was completely free to interpret the laws, without any regard for what previous court decisions had said on the subject?

Judge-made law, common law, is essential to the proper functioning of the legal and legislative system that has served England, Australia and the US for centuries. Without that concept of binding precedent, every court case could come out completely differently, with no consistency. People could not depend on figuring out how a law was going to be interpreted, because judges were not allowed to make their interpretations binding on lower/later courts.

And if appellate decisions were not binding, then judges could ignore prior overrulings, hoping that they would get a different appellate judge who (because precedent is not binding) could happen to agree with them. We'd end up with a system like South Dakota, where laws are passed regardless of the fact that an identical one had been declared illegal, just because a different appellate judge might rule differently. Utter chaos.

Precedent and "stare decisis" are go back centuries to the common law courts of England. They are mentioned as essential in Supreme Court cases dating back to the 1820s. The concepts go back at least to the Code of Justian around 500 AD. And both are still necessary to have a stable functional court system. That doesn't mean rulings cannot change; only that such changes must be for a strong and valid reason, rather than being arbitrary or capricious.

So, it's the job of courts to interpret the laws, and to apply them to specific types of situations. And for stability sake, those decisions must have binding authority on lower courts through precedence. It's also the job of the Supreme Court to interpret the Constitution, which includes applying that interpretation nationally.

The only alternative to having the courts create binding decisions is to throw away the doctrine of precedence entirely. That means that any court can come up with any interpretation, regardless of how the law was interpreted in the past. If the legislature wanted consistency, then the legislatures would have to modify and update the laws, based upon every interpretation that was decided by the courts. Every law would be constantly in flux, as the legislature tweaked wording and added exceptions into the statutes. So, either legislators would constantly need to update laws to reflect and include every possible later specific interpretation, or we lose any concept of stability and predictability in the legal system.

To avoid this, the English Common Law (and its American and Australian counterparts) allowed Judges to have their interpretations be independently binding, as case precedent. This way, the branch of government which is making the interpretations, the judiciary, is responsible for publishing and organizing its own common law declarations, rather than forcing the legislature to constantly be doing that.Remove the ability of the courts to make law and you drastically weaken the stability of the entire legal system.