Judical Creativity in Law

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Judicial creativity

The traditional view of the law making process is that Parliament makes the law through acts of parliament and delegated legislation and judges merely apply it in court to the cases presented before them. The main reason for this being that Members of Parliament are democratically elected to make law. Whereas judges are appointed by the Lord Chancellor to decide cases.

Although theoretically this should be true in reality judges can and do make law through the operation of the doctrine of judicial precedent and statutory interpretation.

There are many areas of law which owe their existence to decisions by judges. For example in the Criminal Law the judges played a major role in developing the law on intention and the relationship of foresight of consequences to intention has also been formulated by judicial decisions in Molony, Nedrick and Woolin though in these cases there was a statutory starting point with s8 Criminal Justice Act where Parliament provided guidance.

The law of negligence in the law of tort is another area which has been developed and refines by judicial decisions. For example the development of the neighbour principle in the case Donoghue v Stevenson which is the leading case when trying to establish whether a duty of care is owed.


In England and Wales the courts operate a very rigid doctrine of precedent which has the effect that every court is bound by the decisions made by courts above it in the hierarchy and in general courts are bound by their own past decisions.

The doctrine of Precedent is the process whereby judges should follow previous decisions in similar cases to help maintain a degree of consistency in the way the law is applied in similar cases. It is based on the maxim “stare decisis” which means stand by what has been decided.

The Ratio Decidendi (reasons for deciding) is the binding part of a judge’s decision but how judges interpret this can vary thus changing the impact it can have on future decisions

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The obiter dicta (things said by the way) though not binding can still be used as persuasive precedent and so a judges influence can extend beyond that provided by the rules of precedent.

Apart from the Obiter dicta there are other forms of persuasive precedent which although are not binding can still have an impact on the decisions of judges e.g. decisions of courts lower in the hierarchy. An example of this is in RvR (marital rape) where the HoL followed a decision made by the Court of Appeal and effectively created a new crime deciding that rape could be ...

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