Precedent and Overruling in the UK Supreme Court

Abstract

This paper examines questions that are fundamental to the doctrine of precedent and are therefore of central importance to how law operates in the UK. These include, what explicit or implicit use has been made of the 1966 Practice Statement and what are the criteria for deciding whether the Supreme Court should overrule one of its past decisions? The paper also touches on aspects of how the UK Supreme Court works and also considers afresh, and with case law examples, the basic question of how one determines the ratio decidendi of a case.

Keywords: precedent, courts, judicial reasoning, UK Supreme Court

JEL Classification: K00