Understanding the Court Hierarchy in England

the hierarchy of the courts. If you do not know this part of the law, you will not be able to attempt the answers on any chap. You must know the importance of each court, their standing, and how they work to pass the exam or attempt any question. The courts practice a very strict judicial precedent theory in England and Wales, which has the consequence that, in the hierarchy, each court must follow any decision i.e. taken by a court above it. In fact, appellate judges are constrained by their own previous decisions, courts considering appeals. So the court structure is the next important point to explain. Remember that the House of Lords was the high court in the British legal system until October 2009. The Supreme Court then dissolved this court and substituted it. The lower courts will obey Supreme Court decisions as well as House of Lords judgments that the Supreme Court has not modified. Appellate Courts Appellate courts are those that hear appeals. The European Court of Justice. Remember the difference between the European Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights. The European Court of Justice is binding. The European Court of Human Rights demands the judges to read the Law of UK in line with the European Court of Human Rights after the Human Rights Act 1998 hence it is not binding. Write this in the paper for extra marks. The European Court of Justice has been the highest court influencing our legal system since 1973. A decision taken by this court is binding on all other courts in Wales and England in questions of European law. However, there are still rules that are not influenced by EU law, and the Supreme Court is the Supreme Court for these regulations. An important feature of the European Court of Justice is that if it thinks it is appropriate, it can overrule its own past decisions. This flexible approach to historical precedence is seen in many European legal systems. It compares with our national court's more static approach. Supreme Court. The Supreme Court is the final Supreme Court, and its judgments are binding on all other courts in the English legal system. Although it will usually obey them, the Supreme Court is not constrained by its own past decisions. The highest court in the UK. Binding on all. previously known as HOL, Court of Appeal. A step down in the hierarchy is the Court of Appeal, which has two divisions, civil and criminal. The Court of Appeal's two branches is required to agree with the rulings of the European Court of Justice and the Supreme Court. However, they generally have to obey their own past decisions. Although, there are some specific exceptions to this rule, and the Court of Appeal, Criminal Division, is more accommodating when the issue involves the subject's rights. Divisional Courts The three divisional courts, Queen's Bench, Chancery and Family, are bound by the European Court of Justice, Supreme Court and Court of Appeal decisions. Furthermore, the divisional courts are bound by their own previous decisions, even though they function similar exemptions to the Court of Appeals ones. Courts of the First Instance The word Courts of First Instance includes any court where a jury is heard at the original trial. Few first cases are considered by the appellate courts. We are only concerned with lawsuits from other court decisions. Quite often, a point of law is going to be an appeal. It requires the courts of appeal to determine the rules, and that is why the courts of appeal are much more relevant than first-instance courts when it comes to setting precedent. First-instance courts seldom set a precedent. They have to follow the decisions of the court mentioned above. The High Court. This is bound by all the above court's rulings and binds the lower courts in effect. Judges of the High Court do not have to obey the rulings of each other. However, they typically do so. In Colchester Estates, Cardiff v. Carlton Industries plc, 1984, it was established that two older rulings were in dispute, instead, given that the first ruling in the latter case had been fully considered, the latter judgment should be adopted. Inferior Courts. These are the Crown Court, the County Court, and the Magistrates Court. Courts are obliged to follow all higher courts'rulings, and a lower court's decision would rarely create a precedent. The one exception to this is technical precedent for the Magistrates Court is created by a legal ruling on the point of law in the Crown Court. Nevertheless, this is of no practical effect as such decisions are rarely reported in the law books. The Supreme Court The Supreme Court's main debate, previously the House of Lords, is the degree to which it can obey its own past decisions, and the views on it have evolved over time. The initial claim was that the House of Lords was able to overturn past decisions. Still, this more flexible approach slowly vanished during the 19th century. By the end of that century, the House of Lords ruled in London Street Tramways v London County Council, 1898, that certainty in the law was more essential than the risk of individual hardships. being incurred at having to follow precedent. From 1898 to 1966, however, the House of Lords found it to be absolutely bound by its own previous decisions unless it had made the decision per incurium, that is in mistake. The definition of wrongdoing, though, applied only to cases where a decision was made without taking into account the influence of a relevant statute. This was not considered to be acceptable. because the legislation was unable to change to meet changing social circumstances and views, nor could the courts alter the future false rulings. If the House of Lords'judgment became inadequate, then the only way to change it was by Parliament introducing a new Parliament Act. It occurred as an aspect of a criminal offence in the law of intention. The House of Lords in DPP v Smith, 1961 found that if a reasonable person expected that death or very serious injury could arise from the conduct of the perpetrator, an accused could be guilty of murder. This decision was criticized because it meant that the accused could be guilty even if he didn't intend to cause injury or death, nor did he realize that his behavior could have that effect. Finally, after adopting the Criminal Justice Act 1967, Parliament changed the law. The Practice Statement The law was becoming rigid and outdated, so the judges decided they can now depart from the previous judgment. This was only allowed to the SC. It was known that there should be more discretion in the ultimate court of appeal than the House of Lords. The crucial date for today's legal precedent structure was 1966 when the Lord Chancellor released a statement of procedure proposing a reform in the London Street Tramways v County Council Statute. The practice statements said their lordships see the use of precedent as an indispensable basis for deciding what the law is and applying it to individual cases. It gives at least some level of certainty that people can rely on when conducting their affairs, as well as a foundation for the equitable advancement of legal rules. However, their lordships understand that strict adherence to the precedent in a specific case will contribute to discrimination as well as unduly hinder the law's proper development. We also propose to change their current practice and, though considering this House's former resolutions as usually binding, to deviate from a previous decision when it seems appropriate to do so. In this regard, they should bear in mind the danger of retrospectively upsetting the grounds on which contracts, land acquisition, and tax agreements were signed, as well as the particular need for clarity as to criminal law. This statement is not intended to impact the use of precedents anywhere other than in this House. The practice statement is the major chunk of analysis. Two-thirds of your discussion on SC should be about the practice statement. Write about its pros and cons and if it was a good decision. Use of the practice statement. Note, the practice statement is used mostly in civil cases and not the criminal cases, that is because the courts made it clear that certainty in criminal law is the most important. This practice statement had enabled the House of Lords to amend the law since 1966 when it considered a prior case was wrongly decided. It had the freedom to refuse to comply with a previous case because it seemed right to do that. For example, this term is very ambiguous and offered no clarity as to when a prior ruling could be overruled by the House of Lords. In general, the House of Lords, particularly in the first few years after 1966, was reluctant to use this control. Conway v. Rimmer, 1968, was the first instance in which the procedure notice was used, but this covered only a technical point about evidence disclosure. It was not until 1972 that the first significant use took place in Harrington v. British Railways Board, 1972, which implicated the law on the duty of care due to a child trespasser. Addy v. Dumbrex, 1929, had determined that a landowner would only owe a child trespasser a duty to care for injury issues if those injuries were intentionally or negligently caused. The Lords ruled in Harrington that social and physical circumstances have improved after 1929, and the legislation was also supposed to change. The House of Lords continued to be very reluctant to be using the practice statement, as the case of Jones v. Secretary of State for Social Services shows. This case involved the understanding of the 1946 National Insurance, Industrial Injuries Act and four of the seven judges reviewing the case considered that the earlier redoubling, 1967, decision was wrong. Notwithstanding this, the Lords declined to overrule the earlier case, continuing to stick to the principle that consistency was the precedent's most important feature. Nuller v. DPP, 1973, demonstrated the same mentality as Lord Reid said. Our reform and procedure in not finding this house's previous decisions as strictly binding does not mean that we should always revoke it whenever we expect that a previous ruling was false. We must be confident that there is some really good reason in the general interest of consistency in the law before we behave like that. From the mid-1970s onwards, a house of lords showed a little more willing to make use of the practice statement. For example, in Miliango's V. George Frank, Textiles, Ltd. 1976, the House of Lords used the practice statement to overrule a previous judgment that damages could be awarded only in sterling. More recently, in Murphy v Brentwood District Council, 1990, the House of Lords overruled the decision in Anns v Merton London Borough, 1977, regarding the test for negligence in the law of tort. Another major case was Pepper v Hart, 1993, where the previous ban on the use of Hansard in statutory interpretation was overruled. The House of Lords used the practice statement in Horton v. Sadler and another, 2006, to depart from its own previous decision. The case involved a lawsuit for personal injury, but the point of law to be determined was the right to require out-of-time operation under S. 33 of the 1980 Limitation Act. The House of Lords in Walkley v. Precision Forging's LTD, 1979, differed from their ruling. The Law Lords departed from Walkley for three reasons. It deprived the claimants in an unfair way of a right that Parliament had intended them to have. It had driven the Court of Appeal to draw distinctions that were correct but were so fine as to reflect no credit on the area of law. It clearly went against the Parliament's intention. During his address, Lord Bingham considered the issue of moving away from a previous decision. He found out that the situation was not one where leases, land agreements, or contractual deals had been signed. nor did it include criminal law where clarity was of particular importance. Furthermore, by breaking from the previous decision, there would be no downside to public administration. The Practice Statement in Criminal Law The procedure statement emphasized the need for consistency in criminal law, so it was not shocking that the House of Lords did not rush to overturn certain criminal decisions. In R. V. Shapuri, which overruled the Anderton v. Ryan 1985, ruling on efforts to do the unthinkable, the first use in a criminal case was. The interesting point was that the Anderton decision had been made less than a year ago, but research lawyers had strongly criticized it. Lord Bridge said in the case of Shivpuri, I'm undeterred by the reality that the ruling was so new in Anderton v Ryan. The declaration of practice is an intentional abandoning of our claim of infallibility. If the rule has been skewed by a serious error reflected in this House's ruling, the quicker it is fixed, the greater. In other terms, a House of Lords admitted that they might often make mistakes. Then the most important thing was to amend the legislation. Where a prior ruling is overruled by the procedure notice, the specific situation is effectively ignored. The law is now the one set out in the new case. RV RNG, 2003 was also a major case concerning the use of the practice statement. The House of Lords used the procedure statement in this instance to overrule Caldwell's earlier, 1982, ruling on the regulation of criminal damage. The House of Lords also found in Caldwell that recklessness included the case where the convict did not realize the danger of his conduct causing damage. Still, there was a possibility that an average conscientious individual would have known. It was considered that this was the wrong test to use in our VRNG. Caldwell was overruled by the law lords, who argued that an offender is reckless even because he recognizes that there is a chance of injury and goes on and ignores the danger. This case shows the House of Lords to be able to use the code of procedure when they felt it was appropriate to do so. The Supreme Court. With the transition from the House of Lords to the Supreme Court in October 2009, The practice statement does not refer only to the Supreme Court, so it is not certain if this court will use the statement of practice. Nevertheless, the Supreme Court's procedure rules state that if an applicant for approval to appeal requires the Supreme Court to differ from one of its own rulings or from one of the House of Lords, this should be clearly stated in the request and full details should be provided. It means that, under the procedure declaration, the Supreme Court must run a similar system to that. Even though SC can use practice statement, they have been very reluctant. The Court of Appeal. As has already been mentioned, this court has two sections, the civil division and the criminal division, and the precedent laws in these two courts are not quite the same. Decisions of courts above it. The Court of Appeals'two branches is governed by rulings of the European Court of Justice and the Supreme Court. This is so while attempts have been made in the past, particularly by Lord Denning, to claim that the House of Lords, now the Supreme Court, should not warrant the Court of Appeal. In Broome v Castle and Co Ltd. 1971, Lord Denning declined to follow the House of Lords'earlier decision in Rooks v. Barnard, 1964, as to the conditions under which exemplary damages could be granted. Once, in the cases of Schorschmeier GmbH v. Henning, 1975, and Miliangos v. George Frank, Textiles, Ltd., 1976, the Court of Appeal disobeyed a ruling of the House of Lords in Havana Railways, 1961, holding that only sterling, English money, could be awarded damages. Lord Denning's reasoning for refusing to obey the House of Lords'judgment was that the global economic climate had shifted and that sterling was no longer a stable currency, there were circumstances where justice could only be done by awarding damages in a different currency. Schorschmeier GmbH v Henning's argument was not taken before the House of Lords, but Miliangos v George Frank, Textiles, Ltd. appealed to the Commons, finding out that the Court of Appeal had no ability to ignore or overrule the House of Lords'judgments. Millie Ango's most remarkable aspect was that the House of Lords then used the Declaration of Procedure to circumvent its own Havana Railways ruling. Should the Court of Appeal have to follow Supreme Court-slash-House of Lords decisions? The biggest argument in favor of the Court of Appeal being able to ignore the judgments of the Supreme Court-slash-House of Lords is that very few appeals hit the Supreme Court, so that if there is a mistake in the legislation, it may take years before an acceptable case is brought before the Supreme Court. Schorschmeier and Miliango's proceedings demonstrate the possibility for discrimination if the Supreme Court slash House of Lords does not have an appeal. What would have changed if the Schorschmeier Court of Appeal had decided to follow the Havana Railway's ruling of the House of Lords? It is quite likely that Miliango's subsequent appeal may not even have been taken before the Court of Appeal. After all, why waste any money on an appeal when previous cases have been ruled on that point of law in both the Court of Appeal and the House of Lords? The rule would have been deemed set, and it could have never been modified. On the other side, if the Supreme Court slash House of Lords could be overruled by the Court of Appeal, the legal structure would break down, and the legislation would become unclear. With lower courts to choose from, there would be two contradictory precedents. This would make it hard for the lower court prosecutor. It would also make the law so uncertain that counseling clients on the law would be difficult for lawyers. Since the Miliango's judgment, though, there has been no further opposition by the Court of Appeal to this fundamental idea, in our legal precedent system, that in the order lower courts will obey court decisions above them. Lord Denning tried a lot to not follow the decisions of the SC. Nevertheless, the Supreme Court told, it is not up to the COA to guide the lower courts in not following the decisions of the Supreme Court, they are bound to follow the rulings of the SC. Lord Denning had believed that most cases do not even go to the SC, and hence the COA should be given the power to use the PS. Human Rights Cases Human rights disputes are one area of law where the Court of Appeal does not need to obey the House of Lords-Supreme Court decisions. Section 2, 1, a, of the 1998 Human Rights Act specifies that any verdict or ruling of the European Court of Human Rights must be taken into account by the courts. In the case of Remedicaments No. 2, Director-General of Fair Trading v. Great Britain's Proprietary Association, 2001, the Court of Appeal refused to follow the ruling of the House of Lords in Art v. Goff, 1993, because it varied significantly from the European Court of Human Rights rulings. The situation of the Director-General was about whether a recommendation should be set aside because of one of the panel's possibility of prejudice. For Goff, the prejudice check included the Court of Appeal. determining if there was a real danger that the court would be biased. The Court of Appeal noted that the focus in the cases of the European Court of Human Rights was on the reasonable interpretation that the evidence might offer. The Goff tests was a modest change. However, this appears to be one situation where a Supreme Court-slash-House of Lords decision does not need to be followed by the Court of Appeal.

So the court structure is the next important point to explain. Remember that the House of Lords was the high court in the British legal system until October 2009. The Supreme Court then dissolved this court and substituted it. The lower courts will obey Supreme Court decisions as well as House of Lords judgments that the Supreme Court has not modified. Appellate Courts Appellate courts are those that hear appeals. The European Court of Justice.

Remember the difference between the European Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights. The European Court of Justice is binding. The European Court of Human Rights demands the judges to read the Law of UK in line with the European Court of Human Rights after the Human Rights Act 1998 hence it is not binding.

Write this in the paper for extra marks. The European Court of Justice has been the highest court influencing our legal system since 1973. A decision taken by this court is binding on all other courts in Wales and England in questions of European law. However, there are still rules that are not influenced by EU law, and the Supreme Court is the Supreme Court for these regulations. An important feature of the European Court of Justice is that if it thinks it is appropriate, it can overrule its own past decisions. This flexible approach to historical precedence is seen in many European legal systems.

It compares with our national court's more static approach. Supreme Court. The Supreme Court is the final Supreme Court, and its judgments are binding on all other courts in the English legal system. Although it will usually obey them, the Supreme Court is not constrained by its own past decisions.

The highest court in the UK. Binding on all. previously known as HOL, Court of Appeal. A step down in the hierarchy is the Court of Appeal, which has two divisions, civil and criminal. The Court of Appeal's two branches is required to agree with the rulings of the European Court of Justice and the Supreme Court.

However, they generally have to obey their own past decisions. Although, there are some specific exceptions to this rule, and the Court of Appeal, Criminal Division, is more accommodating when the issue involves the subject's rights. Divisional Courts The three divisional courts, Queen's Bench, Chancery and Family, are bound by the European Court of Justice, Supreme Court and Court of Appeal decisions. Furthermore, the divisional courts are bound by their own previous decisions, even though they function similar exemptions to the Court of Appeals ones. Courts of the First Instance The word Courts of First Instance includes any court where a jury is heard at the original trial.

Few first cases are considered by the appellate courts. We are only concerned with lawsuits from other court decisions. Quite often, a point of law is going to be an appeal.

It requires the courts of appeal to determine the rules, and that is why the courts of appeal are much more relevant than first-instance courts when it comes to setting precedent. First-instance courts seldom set a precedent. They have to follow the decisions of the court mentioned above. The High Court. This is bound by all the above court's rulings and binds the lower courts in effect.

Judges of the High Court do not have to obey the rulings of each other. However, they typically do so. In Colchester Estates, Cardiff v. Carlton Industries plc, 1984, it was established that two older rulings were in dispute, instead, given that the first ruling in the latter case had been fully considered, the latter judgment should be adopted. Inferior Courts. These are the Crown Court, the County Court, and the Magistrates Court.

Courts are obliged to follow all higher courts'rulings, and a lower court's decision would rarely create a precedent. The one exception to this is technical precedent for the Magistrates Court is created by a legal ruling on the point of law in the Crown Court. Nevertheless, this is of no practical effect as such decisions are rarely reported in the law books. The Supreme Court The Supreme Court's main debate, previously the House of Lords, is the degree to which it can obey its own past decisions, and the views on it have evolved over time.

The initial claim was that the House of Lords was able to overturn past decisions. Still, this more flexible approach slowly vanished during the 19th century. By the end of that century, the House of Lords ruled in London Street Tramways v London County Council, 1898, that certainty in the law was more essential than the risk of individual hardships. being incurred at having to follow precedent.

From 1898 to 1966, however, the House of Lords found it to be absolutely bound by its own previous decisions unless it had made the decision per incurium, that is in mistake. The definition of wrongdoing, though, applied only to cases where a decision was made without taking into account the influence of a relevant statute. This was not considered to be acceptable. because the legislation was unable to change to meet changing social circumstances and views, nor could the courts alter the future false rulings. If the House of Lords'judgment became inadequate, then the only way to change it was by Parliament introducing a new Parliament Act.

It occurred as an aspect of a criminal offence in the law of intention. The House of Lords in DPP v Smith, 1961 found that if a reasonable person expected that death or very serious injury could arise from the conduct of the perpetrator, an accused could be guilty of murder. This decision was criticized because it meant that the accused could be guilty even if he didn't intend to cause injury or death, nor did he realize that his behavior could have that effect. Finally, after adopting the Criminal Justice Act 1967, Parliament changed the law. The Practice Statement The law was becoming rigid and outdated, so the judges decided they can now depart from the previous judgment.

This was only allowed to the SC. It was known that there should be more discretion in the ultimate court of appeal than the House of Lords. The crucial date for today's legal precedent structure was 1966 when the Lord Chancellor released a statement of procedure proposing a reform in the London Street Tramways v County Council Statute. The practice statements said their lordships see the use of precedent as an indispensable basis for deciding what the law is and applying it to individual cases. It gives at least some level of certainty that people can rely on when conducting their affairs, as well as a foundation for the equitable advancement of legal rules.

However, their lordships understand that strict adherence to the precedent in a specific case will contribute to discrimination as well as unduly hinder the law's proper development. We also propose to change their current practice and, though considering this House's former resolutions as usually binding, to deviate from a previous decision when it seems appropriate to do so. In this regard, they should bear in mind the danger of retrospectively upsetting the grounds on which contracts, land acquisition, and tax agreements were signed, as well as the particular need for clarity as to criminal law. This statement is not intended to impact the use of precedents anywhere other than in this House. The practice statement is the major chunk of analysis.

Two-thirds of your discussion on SC should be about the practice statement. Write about its pros and cons and if it was a good decision. Use of the practice statement. Note, the practice statement is used mostly in civil cases and not the criminal cases, that is because the courts made it clear that certainty in criminal law is the most important.

This practice statement had enabled the House of Lords to amend the law since 1966 when it considered a prior case was wrongly decided. It had the freedom to refuse to comply with a previous case because it seemed right to do that. For example, this term is very ambiguous and offered no clarity as to when a prior ruling could be overruled by the House of Lords.

In general, the House of Lords, particularly in the first few years after 1966, was reluctant to use this control. Conway v. Rimmer, 1968, was the first instance in which the procedure notice was used, but this covered only a technical point about evidence disclosure. It was not until 1972 that the first significant use took place in Harrington v. British Railways Board, 1972, which implicated the law on the duty of care due to a child trespasser.

Addy v. Dumbrex, 1929, had determined that a landowner would only owe a child trespasser a duty to care for injury issues if those injuries were intentionally or negligently caused. The Lords ruled in Harrington that social and physical circumstances have improved after 1929, and the legislation was also supposed to change. The House of Lords continued to be very reluctant to be using the practice statement, as the case of Jones v. Secretary of State for Social Services shows.

This case involved the understanding of the 1946 National Insurance, Industrial Injuries Act and four of the seven judges reviewing the case considered that the earlier redoubling, 1967, decision was wrong. Notwithstanding this, the Lords declined to overrule the earlier case, continuing to stick to the principle that consistency was the precedent's most important feature. Nuller v. DPP, 1973, demonstrated the same mentality as Lord Reid said. Our reform and procedure in not finding this house's previous decisions as strictly binding does not mean that we should always revoke it whenever we expect that a previous ruling was false. We must be confident that there is some really good reason in the general interest of consistency in the law before we behave like that.

From the mid-1970s onwards, a house of lords showed a little more willing to make use of the practice statement. For example, in Miliango's V. George Frank, Textiles, Ltd. 1976, the House of Lords used the practice statement to overrule a previous judgment that damages could be awarded only in sterling. More recently, in Murphy v Brentwood District Council, 1990, the House of Lords overruled the decision in Anns v Merton London Borough, 1977, regarding the test for negligence in the law of tort.

Another major case was Pepper v Hart, 1993, where the previous ban on the use of Hansard in statutory interpretation was overruled. The House of Lords used the practice statement in Horton v. Sadler and another, 2006, to depart from its own previous decision. The case involved a lawsuit for personal injury, but the point of law to be determined was the right to require out-of-time operation under S.

33 of the 1980 Limitation Act. The House of Lords in Walkley v. Precision Forging's LTD, 1979, differed from their ruling. The Law Lords departed from Walkley for three reasons.

It deprived the claimants in an unfair way of a right that Parliament had intended them to have. It had driven the Court of Appeal to draw distinctions that were correct but were so fine as to reflect no credit on the area of law. It clearly went against the Parliament's intention.

During his address, Lord Bingham considered the issue of moving away from a previous decision. He found out that the situation was not one where leases, land agreements, or contractual deals had been signed. nor did it include criminal law where clarity was of particular importance. Furthermore, by breaking from the previous decision, there would be no downside to public administration. The Practice Statement in Criminal Law The procedure statement emphasized the need for consistency in criminal law, so it was not shocking that the House of Lords did not rush to overturn certain criminal decisions.

In R. V. Shapuri, which overruled the Anderton v. Ryan 1985, ruling on efforts to do the unthinkable, the first use in a criminal case was. The interesting point was that the Anderton decision had been made less than a year ago, but research lawyers had strongly criticized it. Lord Bridge said in the case of Shivpuri, I'm undeterred by the reality that the ruling was so new in Anderton v Ryan.

The declaration of practice is an intentional abandoning of our claim of infallibility. If the rule has been skewed by a serious error reflected in this House's ruling, the quicker it is fixed, the greater. In other terms, a House of Lords admitted that they might often make mistakes. Then the most important thing was to amend the legislation. Where a prior ruling is overruled by the procedure notice, the specific situation is effectively ignored.

The law is now the one set out in the new case. RV RNG, 2003 was also a major case concerning the use of the practice statement. The House of Lords used the procedure statement in this instance to overrule Caldwell's earlier, 1982, ruling on the regulation of criminal damage.

The House of Lords also found in Caldwell that recklessness included the case where the convict did not realize the danger of his conduct causing damage. Still, there was a possibility that an average conscientious individual would have known. It was considered that this was the wrong test to use in our VRNG. Caldwell was overruled by the law lords, who argued that an offender is reckless even because he recognizes that there is a chance of injury and goes on and ignores the danger. This case shows the House of Lords to be able to use the code of procedure when they felt it was appropriate to do so.

The Supreme Court. With the transition from the House of Lords to the Supreme Court in October 2009, The practice statement does not refer only to the Supreme Court, so it is not certain if this court will use the statement of practice. Nevertheless, the Supreme Court's procedure rules state that if an applicant for approval to appeal requires the Supreme Court to differ from one of its own rulings or from one of the House of Lords, this should be clearly stated in the request and full details should be provided.

It means that, under the procedure declaration, the Supreme Court must run a similar system to that. Even though SC can use practice statement, they have been very reluctant. The Court of Appeal.

As has already been mentioned, this court has two sections, the civil division and the criminal division, and the precedent laws in these two courts are not quite the same. Decisions of courts above it. The Court of Appeals'two branches is governed by rulings of the European Court of Justice and the Supreme Court. This is so while attempts have been made in the past, particularly by Lord Denning, to claim that the House of Lords, now the Supreme Court, should not warrant the Court of Appeal.

In Broome v Castle and Co Ltd. 1971, Lord Denning declined to follow the House of Lords'earlier decision in Rooks v. Barnard, 1964, as to the conditions under which exemplary damages could be granted. Once, in the cases of Schorschmeier GmbH v. Henning, 1975, and Miliangos v. George Frank, Textiles, Ltd., 1976, the Court of Appeal disobeyed a ruling of the House of Lords in Havana Railways, 1961, holding that only sterling, English money, could be awarded damages. Lord Denning's reasoning for refusing to obey the House of Lords'judgment was that the global economic climate had shifted and that sterling was no longer a stable currency, there were circumstances where justice could only be done by awarding damages in a different currency. Schorschmeier GmbH v Henning's argument was not taken before the House of Lords, but Miliangos v George Frank, Textiles, Ltd. appealed to the Commons, finding out that the Court of Appeal had no ability to ignore or overrule the House of Lords'judgments. Millie Ango's most remarkable aspect was that the House of Lords then used the Declaration of Procedure to circumvent its own Havana Railways ruling.

Should the Court of Appeal have to follow Supreme Court-slash-House of Lords decisions? The biggest argument in favor of the Court of Appeal being able to ignore the judgments of the Supreme Court-slash-House of Lords is that very few appeals hit the Supreme Court, so that if there is a mistake in the legislation, it may take years before an acceptable case is brought before the Supreme Court. Schorschmeier and Miliango's proceedings demonstrate the possibility for discrimination if the Supreme Court slash House of Lords does not have an appeal.

What would have changed if the Schorschmeier Court of Appeal had decided to follow the Havana Railway's ruling of the House of Lords? It is quite likely that Miliango's subsequent appeal may not even have been taken before the Court of Appeal. After all, why waste any money on an appeal when previous cases have been ruled on that point of law in both the Court of Appeal and the House of Lords?

The rule would have been deemed set, and it could have never been modified. On the other side, if the Supreme Court slash House of Lords could be overruled by the Court of Appeal, the legal structure would break down, and the legislation would become unclear. With lower courts to choose from, there would be two contradictory precedents.

This would make it hard for the lower court prosecutor. It would also make the law so uncertain that counseling clients on the law would be difficult for lawyers. Since the Miliango's judgment, though, there has been no further opposition by the Court of Appeal to this fundamental idea, in our legal precedent system, that in the order lower courts will obey court decisions above them.

Lord Denning tried a lot to not follow the decisions of the SC. Nevertheless, the Supreme Court told, it is not up to the COA to guide the lower courts in not following the decisions of the Supreme Court, they are bound to follow the rulings of the SC. Lord Denning had believed that most cases do not even go to the SC, and hence the COA should be given the power to use the PS.

Human Rights Cases Human rights disputes are one area of law where the Court of Appeal does not need to obey the House of Lords-Supreme Court decisions. Section 2, 1, a, of the 1998 Human Rights Act specifies that any verdict or ruling of the European Court of Human Rights must be taken into account by the courts. In the case of Remedicaments No. 2, Director-General of Fair Trading v. Great Britain's Proprietary Association, 2001, the Court of Appeal refused to follow the ruling of the House of Lords in Art v. Goff, 1993, because it varied significantly from the European Court of Human Rights rulings. The situation of the Director-General was about whether a recommendation should be set aside because of one of the panel's possibility of prejudice. For Goff, the prejudice check included the Court of Appeal.

determining if there was a real danger that the court would be biased. The Court of Appeal noted that the focus in the cases of the European Court of Human Rights was on the reasonable interpretation that the evidence might offer. The Goff tests was a modest change.

However, this appears to be one situation where a Supreme Court-slash-House of Lords decision does not need to be followed by the Court of Appeal.

Transcript for:Understanding the Court Hierarchy in England

Transcript for:
Understanding the Court Hierarchy in England