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Case law (also known as decisional law or judicial precedent) is the general term for the principles and rules of law set forth in judicial opinions from courts of law.[1] Case law incorporates courts' decisions from individual cases and encompasses courts' interpretations of statutes, constitutional provisions, administrative regulations and, in some cases, law originating solely from the courts. Case law is often published in print law reports or reporters (and increasingly on court websites) to establish precedent - rules to apply in future court decisions dealing with similar situations. For countries with a common law legal system, such as in the United Kingdom, United States, and most of the Commonwealth of Nations, case law is a major source of law. In general, courts in common law countries treat the decisions of higher appellate courts as normative - laying down rules that should, or in some cases must, be used to decide similar legal disputes (called "binding precedent").[1] In countries with legal systems that follow the civil law tradition derived from Roman law, however, the courts are not strictly bound by rules and principles from case law.[2] In the civil law tradition, case law formally plays a minor role compared to the status of the civil code; however, judicial interpretation of the civil code, interpreting the legal meaning of the code's provisions, clarifying them, and providing for unforeseen developments, is often referred to as a jurisprudence constante. In France, the jurisprudence constante of the Cour de cassation (for civil and penal cases) or the Conseil d'État (for administrative cases) is in practice equivalent to case law, and is considerably important in certain areas such as labor law and administrative law. In particular, the Conseil d'État and the Constitutional Council have adopted "fundamental principles" that statutes and regulations must follow, even when those principles were not explicitly written in statutes. In the common law tradition, case law interprets laws, via precedents, based on how prior cases have been decided. Case law governs the impact court decisions have on future cases. Unlike most civil law systems, common law systems follow the doctrine of stare decisis in which lower courts usually make decisions consistent with previous decisions of higher courts.
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