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Judicial Precedent




Any observation made by the judge on a legal question suggested by the case before him or her but not arising in such a manner as requiring a decision is known as obiter dictum (a saying by the way). There may several reasons for a decision provided by the judge in any given judgment and one must not assume that a reason can be regarded as 'obiter' because some other 'ratio' has been provided. Thus, it is not always easy to distinguish ratio decidendi from obiter dictum when evaluating the effects of a particular decision.

A single decision of a superior court is absolutely binding on subsequent inferior courts. However, certain of the superior courts regard themselves as bound by their own decisions whilst others do not:

  1. Decisions of the House of Lords bind all other courts but the House does not regard itself as strictly bound by its previous decisions, for example, in Murphy v Brentwood District Council (1990) the House elected to overrule its earlier decision in Anns v London Borough of Merton (1978) on the issue of a local authority's liability in negligence to future purchasers of property.
  2. The Court of Appeal, Civil Division, holds itself bound by its previous decisions: Young v Bristol Aeroplane Co Ltd (1944) but in that case also identified three exceptional cases where it would disregard its own previous decision. These are (i) where two Court of Appeal decisions conflict; (ii) if the decision although not expressly overruled conflicts with a later decision of the House of Lords; and (iii) if the earlier decision was given per incuriam (through want of care) however it cannot ignore a decision of the House of Lords on the same basis.

