Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

The doctrine of precedent, or stare decisis , requires courts to follow earlier judicial decisions on matters of law. Precedent is one of several doctrines of repose – that is, doctrines for settling issues with finality. The doctrine of res judicata dictates that courts not allow relitigation of particular lawsuits after they have been decided. It applies only to the particular parties to a lawsuit and only with respect to the factual issues that were raised or should have been raised in that lawsuit. The doctrine of collateral estoppel prevents the relitigation in a second lawsuit of particular factual issues that were decided in the first lawsuit, even if the second lawsuit is distinct from the first, and in certain circumstances even if the parties are different. The doctrine of precedent, on the other hand, makes a court's determinations of law in one lawsuit binding on all other courts of equal or inferior rank within the first court's jurisdiction, even if the lawsuits and the parties in the subsequent cases are completely distinct from the lawsuit and the parties in the precedent case. The constraint imposed on courts by the doctrine of precedent can be analyzed both in terms of the scope of the constraint and in terms of the strength of the constraint. The scope of precedential constraint refers to the number of possible cases that the precedent case controls. Put ... log in or subscribe to read full text