How can a court set a precedent and why is it important?
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Generally, when a court issues a ruling, they try to look to prior cases for similar fact patterns and rule in the same way. So when a new set of facts either has no precedent or conflicting precedents based on the peculiarities of that case, it often goes up to a higher court so that those courts can review the precedent. At the highest court, in the US the Supreme Court, there is no further court for it to go up to, so once that court rules on the case, not only does it resolve that case definitively, it now enters the pool of prior cases that lower court judges use to make their decisions again.
There are a lot of things in law that aren’t dealt with in the written law.
Real life has too many technicalities, special cases, and other things that weren’t specifically mentioned in the exact wording of the law. So courts have the ability to interpret the meaning of a law to a certain degree.
A precedent means that the Court decided to do things a certain way, and when that thing comes up again other courts will look to that and do it that way to maintain consistency.
For example let’s say there’s a law that says you cannot ride your bike on major roads without a helmet. If the law doesn’t define what “major” roads are, a judge must decide.
The first judge makes a ruling that in context of this law a major road is anything with 2-lanes or more.
Next time this comes up, other judges try to use the same definition.
An appellate court sets a precedent for all the courts within that court’s jurisdiction. Some state court jurisdictions are quite small; the U.S. Supreme Court’s jurisdiction is nationwide.
Courts set precedent by making a ruling, although they can make rulings that are not supposed to be used as precedent. The Supreme Court often only takes cases that will set an important precedent, as for example when other courts can’t agree on how to apply a new law, or when newly-appointed justices want to reconsider the rulings made by their predecessors.
Once the court sets a precedent it is binding on the trial courts and lower level appellate courts in their jurisdiction. It is not binding on courts outside their jurisdiction but can still be cited for persuasive effect. The precedent is usually a written opinion that goes into detail covering not just the immediate case, but all future cases that are similar.
That said, if the immediate case doesn’t present the facts discussed, that’s not considered precedent but a hypothetical ruling that’s not binding. That’s often called “dictum.”
Legislatures (your elected senators and reps) write the laws.
Courts interpret the law in real life situations, in the context of what is constitutional.
The important thing to note is that the courts can’t just jump in and tell the legislature what to do. They can only rule on cases that have been brought before them and interpret the law that way.
There are levels of courts. There is a trial court where evidence is presented and ruling are made by a judge. Then there are usually a few levels of appellate courts. In law, decisions often come down to interpreting the law that’s written. For example, the term “due process” doesn’t really spell out what is required. So appellate courts will interpret the term. When a higher court interprets a term, that interpretation is precedent, which means that all lower courts have to follow it until a different interpretation comes out. The Supreme Court interprets the US Constitution, so it’s rulings become precedent for every other court in the US on those matters (until it changes it’s mind).
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Lawsuits and court cases are brought when there is a dispute about how to interpret the law. When a court rules formally on a case then it becomes something of a guidepost (especially if it was a high court) to similar cases in the future.
Basically, an attorney will submit to the judge/jury that “Judge/jury XYZ in jurisdiction ABC ruled in favor of the same argument that I’m making in case QRST, and so should you!”
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