510
edits
Changes
→The common law
The common law of Canada is hundreds of years old and has its roots in England in the 12th Century, when Henry II decided to start farming out the job of hearing complaints about people's disputes to judges. The judges would roam the countryside, which is where the term ''circuit court'' originates, deciding these problems on behalf of the king. Acting on behalf of the same employer, the judges needed to make sure that their decisions were similar. The "king" couldn't decide that breaking into someone's house was a civil offence on one day and that it wasn't on another. As a result, each judge felt themselves to be bound by the decisions of their fellow judges, and that is the meaning of "the common law." It's the law that is ''common'' to the whole of the country.
(This, incidentally, was a huge improvement over what was happening in Europe at the same time, where the administration of a uniform legal code had long before collapsed along with the rule of the Roman Empire. "The law" became something that changed from village to village according to local custom, rather than having some laws that could be predicted wherever you travelled. In fact, the original job of the jury was to decide what the local law was, not to decide the facts of a case!)
The idea that a judge is bound by the decision of a previous judge is a legal principle known by its Latin name, ''stare decisis''. Under this principle, a court dealing with a particular kind of problem is required, usually, to follow the decisions of previous courts that dealt with the same sort of problem in the same sort of circumstances. Court decisions are sometimes called "precedents" or "precedent decisions" because of the ''stare decisis'' principle. One decision stands as ''precedent'' for the next.