Case

of
law
Eduardo Lagarde
Ingles tecnico juridico
What is case of law
Case law is law that is based on judicial decisions rather than law based on constitutions,
statutes, or regulations. Case law concerns unique disputes resolved by courts using the
concrete facts of a case. By contrast, statutes and regulations are written abstractly.

Case law, also used interchangeably with common law, refers to the collection of precedents
and authority set by previous judicial decisions on a particular issue or topic. In that sense,
case law differs from one jurisdiction to another.

For example, a case in New York would not be decided using case law from California.
Instead, New York courts will analyze the issue relying on binding precedent. If no previous
decisions on the issue exist, New York courts might look at precedents from a different
jurisdiction, that would be persuasive authority rather than binding authority.
 So…
How to find and use case law
● Case law (or judicial precedent) is law which is made by the courts and decided by
judges. Judicial precedent operates under the principle of stare decisis which
literally means “to stand by decisions”. This principle means that a court must
follow and apply the law as set out in the decisions of higher courts in previous
cases.

● In order for the principle of stare decisis to operate, a judge must know what the
previous decisions of courts are. Case reports, or “law reports”, make this possible.
Although earlier collections of cases exist, it was in the 19 th century that a
formalised system of law reporting was established in Scotland and England. There
are currently many different series of law reports published, which reproduce
judgments and add supplementary information by an editor. It may take some time
between a judgment being handed down and its being published as a report.
Similar systems of law reporting operate in other common law jurisdictions.

● The main sources of cases are law reports, digests and official transcripts.
Law reports
Not all cases are reported. Indeed, given the
volume of cases passing through the courts,
only a small minority of cases are reported.

digest
A digest is a publication which contains summaries
of cases. Digests can be a useful way of finding
and checking the status of a case.

transcripts
Transcripts of judgments are documents
produced by a court (or reproduced by a
publisher) which contain the opinion of the
judge(s) with no additional information added.
Judicial consideration - affirmed, applied, reversed, overruled...
A court in handing down a judgment may consider a previous decision in
several ways. A previous decision may be:

approved applied followed

A higher court may A court may apply the
reasoning of a previous
state that another case
case in a current case,
heard by a lower court where the facts are
was correctly decided
different from those of the
previous case.
A court may be bound by
a previous decision
where the material facts
were substantially the
same as in the instant
case.

distinguished disapproved doubted

A court may not follow a
A higher court may state A court while not
previous and otherwise
that another case heard by expressly overruling a
binding decision because
there is a difference in, for a lower court was previous case may give
example, the material wrongly decided reasons to show that it
facts. The previous case may have been wrongly
remains good law. decided.