Precedent in English Law

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Description
THE three editions of this book, written by the late Sir Rupert Cross, have been the basic textbook on the subject of precedent in English Law for students and practitioners alike. He brought to the subject his characteristic combination of scholarship and practical common sense. It is with awe that I have undertaken the updating of the work for this fourth edition. I am grateful to Lady Cross and to the editors of the Clarendon Law Series for the honour of doing so. All Sir Rupert's colleagues and former pupils cherish his memory and mourn his loss. I first met him more than thirty years ago when he came to speak at his and my old school on the challenges and pitfalls of a career in the law. He was then, and continued to be, a source of inspiration to me and many others. I offer this fourth edition as an all too modest tribute to his memory. The aim of the book continues to be a comprehensive statement of the current doctrine of precedent in England, set in the wider context of the jurisprudential problems which any treatment of this topic involves. Such problems include the nature of the ratio decidendi of a precedent and of its binding force, the significance of precedents alongside other sources of law, their role in legal reasoning, and the account which must be taken of them by any general theory of law. In all these matters, Sir Rupert Cross expounded, with clarity, a fairly traditional practitioners' view. This approach is preserved in the present edition, although
references are included in Chapters II, V, VI, and VII to competing answers, taking into account developments in the literature since the third edition.
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Contents
List of Abbreviations
Bibliography
Introduction
I. The English Doctrine of  Precedent
1. Preliminary Statement
2. Illustrations
3. Comparison With France
4. Comparison With The European Court of Justice
5. Contrast With USA
6. Contrast With Scotland
7. Contrast With Parts Of The Commonwealth
8. History
9. Judicial Regrets
II. Ratio Decidendi And Obiter Dictum
1. Ratio Decidendi And The Structure Of Judgments
2. The American Realists
3. Wambaugh's Test
4. Lord Halsbury In Quinn V. Leathern
5. Dr Goodhart's Method of Determining The Ratio Decidendi
6. Descriptions Of The Ratio Decidendi
7. Obiter Dicta
8. Cases With More Than One Ratio Decidendi
9. The Ratio Decidendi Of Appellate Courts
III. Stare Decisis
1. Introductory
2. The House Of Lords
3. The Court Of Appeal (Civil Division)
4. The Court of Appeal (Criminal Division)
5. Divisional courts
6. The High Court
7. The Crown Court
8. Inferior courts
IV. Exceptions to Stare Decisis
1. Introductory
2. The House of Lords
3. The Court of Appeal (Civil Division)
4. The Court of Appeal (Criminal Division)
5. Other courts
6. Decisions without argument
7. Obsolete decisions
8. Summary of exceptions to stare deems
V. Precedent as a Source of Law
1. The difference sources of law
2. Precedent and custom
3. The relation of precedent to legislation
4. Precedent and the interpretation of statutes
5. Precedent and European Community law
VI. Precedent and Judicial Reasoning
1. Introductory
2. Deduction and induction in judicial reasoning
3. Reasoning by analogy
4. Conceptualism and reasoning by analogy
5. Cases of first impression
6. Conclusions
VII. Precedent  and Legal Theory
1. Precedent and the definition of law
2. Law and fact
VIII. The Future
Table of Cases
Index
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Author Details
The late Sir Rupert Cross was formerly Vinerian Professor of English Law at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford. Or J. W. Harris is a Fellow of Kebie College, Oxford.
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