This article is relevant to AQA A-level 3.1 (law making) and OCR A-level Unit 2 (law making).
The main rule of judicial precedent is stare decisis, roughly translated as ‘let the decision stand’, or ‘treat like cases alike’. Once a decision is made on a point of law, it is fair to keep to that decision in later cases dealing with the same legal principles. However, as with most rules, there are exceptions to it. A court can distinguish one case from another when the material facts are different, and a higher court can overrule the decision of a lower one. Sometimes a court at the same level can overrule its own earlier decisions — this is rare but one way is when the Supreme Court applies the Practice Statement (Judicial Precedent) of 1966.
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