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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>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.
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