Stare Decisis in UK Law

Leading Cases
  • Morelle Ltd v Wakeling
    • Court of Appeal
    • 03 March 1955

    As a general rule the only cases in which decisions should be held to have been given per incuriam are these of decisions given in ignorance or forgetfulness of some inconsistent statutory provision or of some authority binding on the Court concerned: so that in such cases some part of the decision or some step in the reasoning on which it is based is found, on that account, to be demonstrably wrong.

  • Rickards v Rickards
    • Court of Appeal (Civil Division)
    • 20 June 1989

    However the rule is not without exceptions, albeit very limited. These decisions show that this court is justified in refusing to follow one of its own previous decisions not only where that decision is given in ignorance or forgetfulness of some inconsistent statutory provision or some authority binding upon it, but also, in rare and exceptional cases, if it is satisfied that the decision involved a manifest slip or error.

  • Williams v Fawcett
    • Court of Appeal (Civil Division)
    • 14 February 1985

    If we are bound by these decisions, and we are unless they can be treated as having been reached per incuriam, they represent a very considerable change in the law for which, so far as I can see, there is absolutely no warrant. The change to which I refer is, of course, a requirement that these notices shall be signed by the proper officer.

  • Trendtex v Central Bank of Nigeria
    • Court of Appeal (Civil Division)
    • 13 January 1977

    Seeing that the rules of International Law have changed - and do change - and that the Courts have given effect to the changes without any Act of Parliament, it follows to my mind inexorably that the rules of International Law, as existing from time to time, do form part of our English Law.

  • R v Rowe (Andrew)
    • Court of Appeal (Criminal Division)
    • 15 March 2007

    Lord Woolf then referred to two statements made by Lord Diplock. The first, as Diplock LJ in R v Gould [1968] 2 QB 65 at p. 68 was to the effect that the Criminal Division of the Court of Appeal is not rigidly bound by the doctrine of stare decisis. The second, in DPP v Merriman [1973] AC 584 at p. 685 stated that the liberty of the Criminal Division to depart from precedent which it was convinced was erroneous was restricted to cases where the departure was in favour of the accused.

  • Davis (A.P.) (Respondent) v Johnson (A.P.) (Appellant)
    • House of Lords
    • 09 March 1978

    This difficulty could however be surmounted if when the Court of Appeal gave leave to appeal from a decision it has felt bound to make by an authority with which it disagreed, it had a power conferred on it by Parliament to order the appellants and/or the respondents' costs of the appeal to be paid out of public funds. This would be a very rare occurrence and the consequent expenditure of public funds would be minimal.

  • Boys v Chaplin
    • Court of Appeal (Civil Division)
    • 06 December 1967

    But in Young's case it was only final judgments of the Court of Appeal which were under consideration. Young's case, which I loyally, if regretfully, accept as binding upon me, dots not, as I think, preclude this Court from declining to follow the ratio decidendi of a previous interlocutory order of the Court of Appeal if this Court thinks that the ratio decidendi was wrong. In the present state of juristic opinion, I would not extend the doctrine of stare decisis any further.

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