Each branch of government produces a different type of law. Case law is law that has evolved over time from opinions or judicial decisions (while statutory law derives from legislative bodies and administrative law from executive bodies). This guide provides junior lawyers with resources for finding court decisions in case law resources. The reports include brief explanations of judicial systems in the United States; Specialist in federal and state jurisprudence; basic Blue Book citation style for judicial decisions; Digest; and online access to court decisions. In the common law tradition, courts decide the law applicable to a case by interpreting statutes and applying precedents that indicate how and why previous cases were decided. Unlike most civil law systems, common law systems follow the doctrine of stare decisis, to which most courts in similar cases are bound by their own previous decisions. According to stare decisis, all lower courts should make decisions in line with previous decisions of higher courts. [3] In England, for example, the High Court and the Court of Appeal are each bound by their own previous decisions, but since 1966 the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom has been able to depart from its previous decisions, although in practice this is rarely the case. A notable example of cases where the Court has reversed its precedent is R. v. Jogee, where the UK Supreme Court ruled that he and other courts in England and Wales had misapplied the law for nearly 30 years.
Law professors have traditionally played a much smaller role in the development of common law jurisprudence than civil law professors. Because court decisions in civil law traditions are historically short and formally inappropriate for setting precedents, much of the interpretation of law in civil law traditions is done by academics rather than judges; this is called teaching and can be published in treatises or journals such as the Recueil Dalloz in France. Historically, common law courts have relied little on case law; it was therefore very rare at the turn of the century for an academic writer to be quoted in a legal decision (except perhaps for the academic writings of eminent judges such as Coke and Blackstone). Today, academic authors are often cited as a persuasive authority in legal arguments and decisions; They are often cited when judges attempt to implement arguments that other courts have not yet adopted, or when the judge believes that the academic`s reformulation of the law is more persuasive than case law. Thus, common law systems adopt one of the approaches that have long been represented in civil law legal systems. Case law (or precedent) is a law made by the courts and decided by the judges. The case law operates on the principle of stare decisis, which literally means “to stick to decisions”. This principle means that a court must obey and apply the law as set out in decisions rendered by higher courts in previous cases. Moreover, according to the doctrine of parliamentary supremacy, a decision in a case may be superseded by legislation.
Transcripts of judgments are documents prepared by a court (or reproduced by a publisher) that contain the opinion of the judge(s) without additional information. If a case is not reported, a transcript may be the only source of judgment. In some cases, an application to the court seised is the only way to obtain a report. However, many transcripts are now available electronically through public access and subscription services. Given the delay in reporting, these services have become an increasingly important source of recent judgments. You may have heard of case law, but what does that term really mean? While most laws are passed by Parliament as statutes, the courts can also make law in a common law system such as ours. By ruling on a contentious point of law, a higher court (known as a court of record) can amend or clarify the law, setting a precedent that other courts can follow or apply in subsequent cases. Case law, which is also used interchangeably with the common law, refers to the set of precedents and powers established by previous court decisions on a particular subject or issue. In this sense, the case law differs from one jurisdiction to another. For example, a case in New York would not be decided with the California jurisdiction. Instead, New York courts will analyze the issue based on binding precedents. If there are no previous decisions on the matter, New York courts could review precedents from another jurisdiction, which would be more of a persuasive authority than a binding authority.
Other factors, such as the age of the decision and the proximity of the facts, influence the authority of a particular case at common law. A compendium is a publication that contains case summaries. Summaries can be a useful way to find and check the status of a file. You may also be the only source of a case available to you, especially if the case is not reported. Examples include The Faculty Digest and Shaw`s Digest, which contain information on older Scottish cases. The current legal directory and the Monthly Digest also include case summaries. It is important to note that once a case has been annulled, repealed (or replaced by a law), it is no longer a good law and should not be used as an authority. The Interior Library maintains two groups of case reporters for U.S. Supreme Court decisions, overviews that support the location of Supreme Court decisions by topic, and an up-to-date, open service that indexes current Supreme Court cases and questions and provides the first print version of Supreme Court decisions.