Cownie, F. and Bradney, A. (2000) English Legal System in Context,
London, Butterworths, pp. 293--4.
Law is not just a mechanism for settling disputes. It is also a way of avoiding disputes; of telling people how they might order their lives so that disputes can be avoided. If people are to do this they must know what the law is; they must know how judges will settle a dispute should a matter come to court. Law must be predictable. Lawyers must be able to tell their clients how to run their affairs. Judges must be able to announce what the law will be to the world at large. One must be able to know what the law is before going to court, for this would be expensive both financially and socially. Moreover, the law must be removed from the judges. Judges must be there not to decide cases on their own initiative. They must be there to apply a known set of rules to the facts before them. The job of the judge must be stripped of any subjective or personal element. Law must be a system of rules not of men. It has been argued that a system of precedent can be of assistance in allowing all these things to be done.
The previous Lord Chancellor, Lord MacKay, has described the advantages of precedent in this way:
‘ . . . a scheme of precedent is clearly capable of providing important benefits. It assists litigations to assess the nature and scope of legal obligations and, to the extent that it enables them to predict the likely outcome of disputes, it restricts the scope of litigation. By allowing the vast bulk of disputes to be settled in the shadow of the law, a system of precedent prevents the legal apparatus from becoming clogged by a myriad of single instances.
It reflects a basic principle of the administration of justice that like cases should be treated alike and therefore generates a range of expectations from different participants in the legal process.
Rules of law based on a system of precedent are therefore likely to exhibit characteristics of certainty, consistency and uniformity.’
Precedent, on this argument, provides certainty, consistency and thus a measure of clarity. People know not only what the law is but also what it will be. In principle, the ordinary person, the ordinary lawyer, the humblest judge is in just as good a position as the judge in the highest court to look back and see what the law was and, thus, see what the law will be. However, in providing this consistency, precedent also carries a disadvantage. Precedent carries with it the unlikely message that those that came before us knew as much as we do now; that those in the past are good judges of what we should do in the present. One past Lord Chancellor, in a book of political philosophy, has caricatured the lawyer’s idea of precedent thus:
‘Failing all else, their last resort will be: ‘This was good enough for our ancestors and who are we to question their wisdom?’ Then they’ll settle back in their chairs, with an air of having said the last word on the subject -- as if it would be a major disaster for anyone to be caught being wiser than his ancestors!’
OHM'S LAW Ohm's law states that the current through a conductor between two points is directly proportional to the potential difference across the two points. Introducing the constant of proportionality, the resistance,[1] one arrives at the usual mathematical equation that describes this relationship:[2] I = \frac{V}{R} where I is the current through the conductor in units of amperes, V is the potential difference measured across the conductor in units of volts, and R is the resistance…
entitled An Introduction to Copyright In Australia and outlines issues relating to permissions and clearances for copyright material. For information about our other information sheets, publications and seminar program, see our website www.copyright.org.au The purpose of this information sheet is to give general introductory information about copyright. If you need to know how the law applies in a particular situation, please get advice from a lawyer. We update our information sheets from time to time…
weight of an object appears to be concentrated at. COM and COG are usually the same, objects balance at this point. The lower the COG is the more stable the object is, as an object will topple over when the COG is not over the base. Newton’s First Law: the law of inertia If a body has a number of forces acting on it, it will remain in a state of constant velocity if the sum of all the forces is zero. This is called being in a state of equilibrium, and it means that the sums of components of forces in…
relevant to the legal framework of business – that is, the structure of laws within which business decisions are made. Included in the unit are discussions on historical legal issues, the institutions in the Australian legal system, the jurisdiction of the major courts and tribunals in Western Australia, the sources (statute and case law) and processes of law, the tort of Negligence, the nature of business organisations, the Law of Contract, and an introduction to consumer legislation. LEARNING…
includes solution to the following questions: 1.Question : Hazardous materials can be released intentionally in criminal acts or acts of terrorism. 2.Question : The fourth level of emergency response personnel in the HAZWOPER regulation whose training may also include the handling of specific materials and interaction with outside agencies is the ____. 3.Question : The law that began the process of regulating the handling of hazardous waste and defines…
I know about the terms to try make them easier to understand. Elasticity is the tendency of solid materials to return to their original shape after being deformed. Solid objects will deform when forces are applied on them. If the material is elastic, the object will return to its initial shape and size when these forces are removed. The physical explanations for elastic behavior is different materials. In metals, the atomic frame changes size and shape when forces are applied. When forces are removed…
When many of us think of law, certain images come to mind. Tacky personal-injury lawyers in low-budget commercials. “Judge Judy,” “My Cousin Vinny” or “CSI.” Old ladies suing McDonalds over spilled coffee. But there’s a lot more to the law than what we see on TV, and the law affects us all in ways we might not even notice. Our goal this year is to untangle the law and legal system, exploring how it impacts our lives. In the process, we’ll use our critical-thinking, communication and creative skills…
potential risk to your company. Just Green Products (SGP) produces biodegradable packing materials. Just Green Products packages materials under the name "SafePack." since 2008. The name is on all of their packing material and followed the state and trademark federal protection (Safepack Industries Ltd, 2014). In recent times, due to more eco-friendly agricultural production, biodegradable packing materials are provided marketing advantage of the SGP above non-biodegradable competitors. Moreover…
Canada. First Legislation on Obscenity and Criminal Law In 1959 the Canadian government passed the first law regarding obscenity after a social movement by feminist groups. The Canadian law stated "For the purpose of the Act, any publication of a dominant characteristic of which is the undue exploitation of sex, and any one or more of the following subjects, namely, crime, horror, cruelty and violence shall be deemed obscene." The addition of this law did not settle the conflict between Liberals and…
2003 by Addison-Wesley Educational Publishers Inc. This notice is not part of the copyrighted work, which begins below after the phrase "Begin Content". Bookshare distributes this accessible media under restrictions set forth either in copyright law or in an agreement with the copyright owner. If you are not a person with a print disability, or an agency serving people with print disabilities, you should not use this accessible media and should destroy this content. You are not allowed to redistribute…