what does this mean?

Question

the judges have so many ways avoiding the doctrine of binding precedent that it is only a fiction in our own law...

Answer 1

The doctrine says that higher court decisions are binding on lower courts, meaning that when the higher court makes a ruling on an issue, the lower court is bound by that ruling if the same factual situation applies.

The quote is noting that there are many situations where the lower court is not bound -- most often when the facts are different from those in the previous upper-level case.

Precedient is not fiction, as any practicing attorney can tell you. Almost all case citations in any brief are to cases, and many of those are binding precedent. So, while there may be exceptions, the doctrine of precedence is alive and well.

Also, were it not for precedence, lower cases could not be overturned on appeal for applying the wrong law. Precedence is the only thing that makes the law stable. Were it not for that, any reasonable interpretation by a lower court would be valid, regardless of what the upper courts have said.

Finally, for those who don't think binding precedent applies anymore, look at all the Supreme Court cases that have pretty much entirely defined US criminal procedure -- that's all example of binding precident.