25 - Understanding Legal Information Flashcards
What’s different about using a Law Library?
You will be using Primary materials
Statement of the law itself i.e. law made by parliament or made under powers from existing Act of parliament and Case Law
Primary materials make up about half of the Law Library and it takes a bit of practice to find them, you do not find them in the same ways as books
Cases and legislation will often be referred to by strange notation like this.
In order to find primary materials (cases and legislation) in the library, it is helpful to understand the way in which legal information is organised and what kind of information you will find in the library or in legal databases.
Case Law…
Decisions in a Court of Law are made according to a system of Binding/Judicial Precedent which means that once a decision has been made in a court of law, later cases with similar facts should be treated in the same way
This ensures certainty and consistency in the application of law. Existing binding precedents from past cases are applied in principle to new situations by analogy.
Once a decision has been taken, it becomes a precedent (authority) and this precedent is binding. This means that judges on later cases will look at previous cases withy similar facts and apply previous binding precedent to new situations…
The principle by which judges are bound to precedents is known asstare decisis (legal principle by which judges are obligated to respect the precedent established by prior decisions)
What does the system of Judicial/Binding Precedent rely on?
The system relies on Court Hierarchy
Lower courts have to follow principles established by the higher courts
Supreme Court can override its own precedent
Supreme Court
Court of Appeal
High Court
Crown Court - County Court
Magistrate Court - Tribunals
The principle ofstare decisiscan be divided into two components…
The first is the rule that a decision made by a superior court, or by the same court in an earlier decision, is binding precedent that the court itself and all its inferior courts are obligated to follow.
The second is the principle that a court should not overturn its own precedent unless there is a strong reason to do so and should be guided by principles from lateral and inferior courts.
What court deals with disorderly behaviour, motoring offences…?
Magistrates Court
What court deals with murder, robbery rape etc.…?
Crown Court
What court deals with asylum, immigration, criminal injuries compensation, social security, education, employment, child support, pensions, tax and lands?
Tribunals
What does the High Court deal with?
Appeals
What does the County Court deal with?
The County Courts deal with all except the most complicated and the most simple civil cases (including most matters under the value of £5000), such as claims for repayment of debts, breach of contract involving goods or property, personal injury
Where do legal arguments really take place?
This system means that the real legal arguments only really take place in the higher courts.
Why are law reports interesting?
The cases that are reported in law reports are not interesting because of the facts of the case but because of the legal principles involved
What will you find in the Law Library?
You will only find report of cases heard in the higher courts in a Law Library.
This means that the case reports you can expect to find in a Law Library are the ones heard in the higher courts i.e. the ones where the real legal arguments have take place and where precedents have been made.
And these are the cases that are of interest to lawyers. And cases are only reported in law reports is they have a legal interest. What is interesting to a lawyer is not the facts of the case but the legal principles and reasoning involved in deciding the case.
So basically it is only the cases heard in the higher courts which are reported in the legal sense of the word. And in practice this represents only about 2% of the cases that are heard in the UK.
Court decisions…
Court decisions are reported in law reports and will only be reported if they create new precedent
i.e. they extend, modify or clarify the law
And theses cases of legal interest are reported in Law Reports Series which you will find in Law Libraries and on legal databases.
There are a lot of different publishers of law reports series and they decide which case to publish so cases (especially important cases) are often reported in more than one series of law reports.
Some series are general (e.g. the Law reports) others are specialised (e.g. criminal appeal reports)
There are more or less authoritative and those published by ICLR are seen to be more so (checked by judges and include arguments of Counsel i.e. barrister instructed on particular case)
Case law’ is the term we use…
Case law’ is the term we use to describe the collection of all the legal principles emanating from all the reported cases on a given topic
Case law is built up over the years and each area of law has got its key cases. Some cases are very famous for having established modern key legal concept such as Donoghue v Stevenson
Donoghue v Stevenson[1932] AC 562….
Case established the modern concept ofnegligencein Scots law and English law, by setting out general principles whereby one person would owe another person aduty of care.
The neighbour principle was a critical part of Lord Atkin’s reasoning, and was therefore part of the ratio of his judgment
Donoghue and friend went to café and the friend ordered ice cream drink (Ginger beer poured in ice cream)
The owner brought the order and poured part of an opaque bottle ofginger beerinto a tumbler containing ice cream. Donoghue drank some of the contents and her friend lifted the bottle to pour the remainder of the ginger beer into the tumbler.
It was claimed that the remains of asnailin a state of decomposition dropped out of the bottle into the tumbler.
Donoghue later complained of stomach pain and her doctor diagnosed her as havinggastroenteritisand being in a state of severe shock.
Donoghue brought an action against David Stevenson, in which she claimed £500 asdamagesfor injuries sustained by her through drinking ginger beer which had been manufactured by him.
In common law, a person can claim damages from another person where that other person owed the first person aduty of careand harmed that person through their conduct in breach of that duty.
This concept existed prior toDonoghue, but it was generally held that a duty of care was only owed in very specific circumstances, such as where acontractexisted between two parties or where a manufacturer was making inherently dangerous products or was acting fraudulently but no contractual relationship between Donoghue and manufacturer .
There was one between or café owner and friend but friend not harmed
In previous cases manufacturers owed a duty of care to the ultimate consumers if there was a contractual relationship between the parties
