As shown in the previous sections, the way in which the judicial precedent operates in England and Wales has both advantages and disadvantages. It could actually be said that there is a correlating disadvantage to each advantage.
Advantages
The main advantages are:
1. Certainty
• Because the courts obey past decisions, individuals know what the law is and how it is going to be enforced in their case; it helps attorneys to advise clients on the likely outcome of cases; it also enables people to run a business knowing that the law recognizes the financial and other agreements they make. The House of Lords' Declaration of Procedure referred to the value of confirmation.
2. Consistency and fairness in the law
• It is considered fair, and just that similar cases should be resolved in a similar manner, just as it is considered fair in any sport that the rules of the game apply equally to each hand.
3. Precision
• The rule becomes very specific as the rules of law are laid out in actual cases; it is well explained and slowly builds up in the cases that come before the courts through the numerous combinations of evidence
4. Flexibility
• As the Supreme Court can use the Procedure Statement to overrule proceedings, there is scope for the rules to alter. The right to distinguish cases, therefore, provides more flexibility to all courts to escape past decisions and improve the rule.
5. Time-saving
• Precedent, a valuable time-saving tool can be called. Where theory is developed, it is doubtful that lawsuits with identical evidence will go through the long court phase.
The main advantages have been summed up very neatly as follows:
• Security, accuracy, and durability are said to be the key advantages of the preceding method.
• Constitutional clarity is achieved, at least in theory, in that the judge is obliged to follow the remedy if the legal issue posed has been addressed previously.
• The sheer volume of reported cases providing approaches to endless objective problems ensures accuracy. No code or law can ever include the same number.
• Flexibility is accomplished through the possibility of overruling decisions and the possibility of separating and restricting the process of unsound decisions.'
Disadvantages
However, there are disadvantages as follows:
1. Rigidity
• The idea that higher court judgments have to be upheld by lower courts, along with the reality that the Court of Appeal has to obey its own past decisions, will make the law more inflexible to uphold the wrong decisions made in the past.
• There is the added problem that the Supreme Court will have so few instances. The law will change only if the plaintiffs have the bravery, patience, and energy to challenge their lawsuit.
2. Complexity
• Since there are almost half a million reported cases, even with computerized repositories, it is not easy to find all relevant case law. Another thing is the decisions themselves, which are often very long without any clear distinction between the opinions and the reasoning for the opinion.
• In some cases, this makes it difficult to determine the decision-making formula; however, for Dodd's Case (1973), the Court of Appeal judges said they could not consider the ratio in a House of Lords ruling.
3. Illogical distinctions
• Using differentiating to avoid past decisions can result in ' hair-splitting ' so that some areas of law have become very complex. There may be very small differences between some situations, and it may seem illogical.
4. Slowness of growth
• Judges are well convinced that certain areas of law are unclear or need to be reformed; however, they can not make a decision unless a case has to be decided before the courts. This is one of the criticisms of the Court of Appeal's need to follow its own previous decisions, as only about 50 cases go annually to the Supreme Court. There may be a long wait for an appropriate case to be brought before the Supreme Court as far as it is concerned.
This part is what will give you high marks, the more you discuss all these advantages and disadvantages, and relate it to each court, the better you will score. If you say that rigidness leads to outdated laws, counter it by saying; however, it upholds certainty in the law.
Law reporting
• There must be an accurate record of what those judgments were in order to follow past decisions. Written reports have been around since the 13th century in England and Wales, but many of the early reports were very short and not always reliable, it is believed.
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