Do judicial reviews have precedent?

doc22

If a judicial review issued an Order of Certiorari does that mean similar cases would have to go the same route(judicial review) or would the body have to update guidlines to account for court ruling?

Peregrinus

No, not in itself. A judicial review is generally very fact-dependent, and if the court finds particular facts in a particular case and makes an order on the basis of those facts, that doesn't create any precedent for future cases, each of which will have their own facts.

But in a particular case the court may make some statement about, e.g., the proper legal test to be applied to determine whether the facts warrant the making of an order. And that would have some precedential value; future courts would be expected to apply the same test.

Claw Hammer

If the cases are similar, the next judge will have to distinguish the case from earlier one and say why he is not following it. He would have to say what elements of the tow cases are different to justify giving a different ruling. In general if there is a series of similar cases all decided in the same way, it would be very unusual for any subsequent ones to be decided differently. In the High Court a decision on the law by one judge will be followed by a second judge unless the second judge is sure it is wrong. Subsequently a third judge will have a choice. After a series of decisions all going the same way, all judges have to follow them even if they are sure they are wrong because the proposition of law is regarded as established and will remasi9n so until a higher court rules otherwise or there is legislation changing the law.

doc22

Is there a place were judicial reviews judgements are published? The high court search only states decision but not background or am missing something?

Peregrinus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120677027#Comment_120677027

The full text of all the judgements given in the High Court, Court of Appeal and Supreme Court is available on the courts service website: https://courts.ie/judgments. However the website is set up to enable people to find the judgment in a case they already know about; it's not set up to help people research and identify cases that are of interest to them that they don't already know about. And, while it gives you the full text of all the judgments in every case, it has nothing else - no analysis, no summaries, no headnotes to guide the reader. The relevant facts of each case are usually set out in the judgment, but you have to read the judgment to find out what they are.

Judgments with headnotes and other interpretive material are published commercially (as in, you have to pay to get them) via services like the Irish Reports and Irish Law Reports Monthly. These services also publish digests, which are notes of cases which researchers use to identify cases that that may be relevant to a particular issue.

Mostly, people use online services to search for cases that are relevant to whatever question they are interested in. The British and Irish Legal Information Institute has a vast database of Irish, British and other foreign judgments which is freely available at bailii.org. However the search functionality is pretty basic and, again, it's raw judgments only - no digests, headnotes, etc. It's good for tracking down judgments in cases that you already know exist and may be relevant to whatever it is you are researching; less good for other things. Commercial databases like LexisNexis or Westlaw have much more powerful search capacities and also have material other than judgments, but you have to pay to access them, and they require some training to use.

Claw Hammer

A written decision is not given in every Judicial Review case.

doc22

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120681637#Comment_120681637

That's what I was thinking