I understand that Case Law refers to the use of previous court rulings in order to influence future ones in the absence of a hard and fast law or regulation to flesh things out, but it seems like many, many court rulings are given out all the time. When different court rulings make conflicting determinations about a specific issue, what’s used to determine which ruling should be followed?
Along that same topic, are there requirements that must be met for a specific court ruling to be “useable” for the purposes of Case Law?
**Edit:** I’m thinking about this more in terms of US law, although it would be interesting to hear if this differs from country to country.
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Generally speaking nothing is binding as precedent until the US Supreme Court has ruled on it. And if the Supreme Court is going to reverse an earlier decision, they need to explain why.
It’s possible that lower courts (like the District Appeals Courts) could make conflicting rulings on similar cases. For example, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals had found that gay marriage bans in Nevada and Idaho were unconstitutional in 2013, but the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals found that gay marriage bans in Michigan and Ohio were okay in 2014. The Supreme Court ultimately decided in 2015 that the Michigan and Ohio gay marriage laws were unconstitutional, which means that all state gay marriage laws were unconstitutional.
>When different court rulings make conflicting determinations about a specific issue, what’s used to determine which ruling should be followed?
The appellate court system is used in this case. Each court has an appellate court that the lawyers can appeal to. The appeals court is responsible for looking over the case as well as any previous case law and handing down a judgment that makes the most sense in the context of the written law, previous case law, and the current case. The appeals court can overrule a lower court’s ruling, establishing a new precedent. This appeals system goes all the way up to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court is the last appeals court, and their ruling provides the strongest precedent for case law, overruling any lower court’s ruling.
In common law systems (the US, England and Wales, Canada, Australia, Ireland, etc.) generally you have a hierarchy of courts, and rulings only form binding precedent within the same court and courts that are beneath it in the hierarchy. So, for example, in the US you have the Supreme Court at the top, then a system of regional Courts of Appeal (called things like the 1st Circuit Court of Appeal, etc.), then each Court of Appeal has some District Courts underneath it. A ruling from the 1st Circuit Court binds future cases in the 1st Circuit Court and in the district courts underneath it, but it isn’t binding on the Supreme Court or on other regions.
Of course there are lots of complications. It’s possible for a court to decide that they were wrong about something and overturn their own precedent, but in general judges feel they’re supposed to try and avoid doing that unless there is a really good reason. And there can be disagreements about whether something is covered by a precedent or not. In some countries, rulings from the lowest levels of the courts aren’t considered binding at all. And there can be complicated interactions between national courts and state/provincial/regional courts (not to mention international courts), which are often governed separately from each other and apply different sets of laws.
If there are two rulings from the same court that directly contradict each other, then the newer one should generally “win”. In most cases the judge in the newer case will have explained what was wrong with the older ruling and why it doesn’t apply any more.
> Along that same topic, are there requirements that must be met for a specific court ruling to be “useable” for the purposes of Case Law?
It depends on the court to some extent, but one fairly consistent requirement is that the issue needs to be a necessary part of the final ruling. Often judges will go on slight digressions or rule on things that don’t actually matter to the outcome of the case. This is called “obiter dicta”, and doesn’t generally form binding precedent.
For example, suppose I’m suing you for libel, and you argue that (1) you didn’t actually say the stuff that I’m accusing you of and (2) a kitten told you in a dream that you’re legally allowed to say whatever you want about me. The judge might rule that you’re right on point (1), which is enough for you to win the case. They might go on to explain that point (2) is complete nonsense, but this doesn’t form a binding precedent.
> I’m thinking about this more in terms of US law, although it would be interesting to hear if this differs from country to country.
In the civil law systems used in most of Europe, the rules on precedent aren’t quite so strict – I don’t think there is generally a clear distinction between binding and non-binding precedent in these systems. Instead, the wording of the law is supposed to be the main source of law, as opposed to previous court rulings. But in practice the courts do look at precedents and try and avoid contradicting themselves.
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