Judicial Precedent: Avoiding a binding precedent

Question 1

What does stare decisis mean?

Answer 1

Judges follow each other’s decisions when dealing with cases involving same/similar facts

Question 2

When can a judge avoid binding precedent?

Answer 2

Reversing
Overruling
Distinguishing

Question 3

What is reversing?

Answer 3

Where a case goes on appeal and a higher court reverses the decision of the lower court
E.g., CoA reverses rule from HC

Question 4

What can be used for reversing?

Answer 4

Sweet v Parsely

Question 5

What happened in Sweet v Parsley?

Answer 5

CoA decided teacher didn’t need to know drugs were growing in her house so they found her guilty
HOL reversed this and said she did need to know to be guilty

Question 6

What is overruling?

Answer 6

A higher court in a later case states the legal rule decided in an earlier case from a lower court is not working
Some courts can overrule their own decisions (SC- PS and CoA - Young)

Question 7

What is a case for overruling?

Answer 7

R v R

Question 8

What happened in R v R?

Answer 8

CoA overruled old law which stated that a person couldn’t be guilty of raping his wife

Question 9

What is distinguishing?

Answer 9

A case is distinguished when the material facts of a case are significantly different from earlier case
Judge finds important differences between two cases so new precedent can be created

Question 10

What are two cases for distinguishing?

Answer 10

Balfour v Balfour - married
Merritt v Merritt - separated