English Legal System Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

English Legal System - Essay Example Thus, consistency within the law is both in practice and theory, to a maximum extent is preserved and can be regarded as one of the fundamental demands of the meaning of justice, which is covered by giving equal treatment of like cases, in like manner1. UK can be said to be the birth place of the legal concept namely judicial precedent or stare decisis or ratio decidendi. Now, judicial precedent is widely followed by the common law jurisdictions around the world. The judicial precedent concept is footed upon the rule that once a court has given its verdict in a given background, the analogous verdict should be arrived at in any future litigation where the facts of the cases are alike. The judicial precedent principle is based upon the concept that if a verdict was given by a superior court, then lower court is under obligation to follow it, whereas there is no obligation on the superior court to follow the decision given by a lower court. It is to be remembered that decision given by Lord Atkin in Donoghue v Stevenson2 in 1932 as regards to â€Å"neighbour principle† which has become the reference case for the cases involving ‘negligence’ in the latter period3. A gullible consumer may under proper scenarios recoup damages for harm sustained by a defective product either it be car as held in Andrews v Hopkinson,4 or it may be an underwear as held in Grant v Australian Knitting Mills.5 Likewise , the verdict given in Salomon v Salomon & Co Ltd6 also became a precedent in subsequent cases where it was held that a company is a juristic person , has separate legal entity and a company is different from its members.7 In these cases, the courts have considered only the legal principle involved and not the particular facts of the earlier cases. Thus, the legal principle, which is known as the ratio decidendi is the crux portion of the judicial decision which is a binding precedent.8 An obiter dictum in judicial verdict deals with observation made by a judge in the course of litigation, which is not essential for the final verdict and hence is not regarded as a binding precedent. For instance, in R v Howe & Bannister9, it was held by the House of Lords that defence of duress could not be extended to murder crime and this has been regarded as the ratio decidendi of the case. Further, it was observed by the House of Lords, whether the defence should be made available to those accused who engaged in an attempt of murder and observed obiter dicta that the defence of duress should not be made available to the attempted murder also10. It is to be noted that obiter dicta is also referred by other names namely persuasive precedent, which refers to the legal principles observed by the judges which just offer some elucidation on the subject. Thus, persuasive precedents may also emanate from lower courts and also from the verdicts of other jurisdiction11. In R v Gotts12 , the House of Lords was of the view that justification under duress cannot be extended for