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Handbook on the Law of Judicial Precedents, Or, The Science of Case Law
Handbook on the Law of Judicial Precedents Or The Science of Case Law Author:Henry Campbell Black Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: latter view, a solemn adjudication of a court having authority withdraws from the realm of abstraction the rule or principle of law which it enunciates and estab... more »lishes it in the character of a fixed and permanent standard, thus placing it beyond the reach, for abrogation or modification, of inferior courts and even of the successors of the judge or the court which enunciated it. Thus it is said: "The court almost always, in deciding any question, creates a moral power above itself; and when the decision construes a statute, it is legally bound, for certain purposes, to follow it as a decree emanating from a paramount authority." 1 So also, according to Blackstone, "it is an established rule to abide by former precedents where the same points come again in litigation, as well to keep the scale of justice even and steady, and not liable to waver with every new judge's opinion, as also because the law in that case being solemnly declared and determined, what before was uncertain, and perhaps indifferent, is now become a permanent rule, which it is not in the breast of any subsequent judge to alter or vary from according to his private sentiments, he being sworn to determine, not according to his own private judgment, but according to the known laws and customs of the land; not delegated to pronounce a new law, but to maintain and expound the old one." 2 In regard to the presumption of correctness attaching to a judicial decision, it may be remarked that it may vary in degree, ranging from a practically conclusive and irresistible force to an almost negligible quantity. This depends on various considerations affecting the value and importance of different precedents, which we shall have occasion to notice hereafter. Generally speaking, however, it is a presumption of law, which, if...« less