Abstract
The chapter is dedicated to a realistic and analytical exploration of three basic issues in the theory of judicial precedent. These are: (a) the notion of ratio decidendi; (b) the interpretation of precedents; (c) the practical relevance of precedents. Dealing with the first issue, three notions of ratio decidendi are proposed by way of a rational reconstruction of on-going concepts. Dealing with the second issue, the whole set of common law techniques for coping with precedents is considered through the spectacles of the distinction between textual interpretation of judicial decisions (as the whole documents containing opinions plus normative conclusions), textual interpretation of a previously identified ratio decidendi, and meta-textual interpretation of a previously identified ratio decidendi. Finally, dealing with the third issue, a few basic conceptual distinctions will be introduced, the influential proposal by the legal theorists of the Bielefelder Kreis will be analysed, and, thereafter, a purportedly comprehensive typology of eight ideal-systems concerning the de iure relevance of judicial precedents will be outlined, to be used as an analytical device for understanding and classifying actual legal systems.
It is a basic principle of the administration of justice that like cases should be decided alike
—R. Cross (1977)
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- 2.
The analysis in the present section is based on Chiassoni (2005b), pp. 75–101, to which I refer also for bibliographical references.
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For this and the following section, I have found a very useful, though totally unstructured, catalogue of common-law techniques in Marshall (1996), p. 29 ss.
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Sometimes, it is alleged that the gist of reasoning with precedent is analogical reasoning. This suggestion has, however, to be resisted. Analogy plays in fact a role in seeing whether the facts of the case at hand are of the same, or like, kind as the facts ruled by a precedent-ratio. But this, important as it may be, does not exhaust neither the techniques of common law reasoning, nor captures the axiological foundation of the authority of precedents. On this issue, see Schauer (2008), pp. 454–460; Schauer (2009), pp. 85–92.
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See e.g. the references in footnote 3 above.
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See MacCormick and Summers (1997), p. vii.
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Appendix: Final Version of the Common Questions, Comparative Legal Precedent Study, September 1994, 555.
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Appendix: Final Version of the Common Questions, Comparative Legal Precedent Study, September 1994, 555.
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In the Italian legal experience, for instance, judges seem to adopt a principle of discretionary-relevance that allows them to oscillate between considering precedents as endowed with (very) weak argumentative relevance and considering them as endowed with strong argumentative relevance.
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Chiassoni, P. (2019). Precedent. In: Interpretation without Truth. Law and Philosophy Library, vol 128. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15590-2_9
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