Navigating Solutions and Darkness

Stare Decisis - Adhere to the decision and don’t unsettle established things. - Intention to bring certainty and uniformity Ratio Decidendi - Underlying principle of a judicial decision - Proposition of law necessary for the decision, or which can be extracted from the decision - Decision based on material facts of the case – where issue to be answered on principles, extracting the material facts and disregarding the immaterial elements. -  Ratio decidendi or general principle has the binding effect as a precedent, not obiter dictum.  Determination or separation of ratio from obiter isn’t so easy. Obiter Dicta - Said by the way - Judicial utterances in the course of delivering a judgment, which taken by themselves weren’t necessary for that particular decision.  PRINCIPAL SOURCES OF LAW Customary Law:  Even though this is the most ancient form of law, its importance is diminishing with the growth of legislation and precedent. How customs are made:...

Law may be from the sovereign, from popular consensus, from god, from a number of heterogeneous factors. These sources can be divided into: Principle sources Customary law -  Even though this is the most ancient form of law, its importance is diminishing with the growth of legislation and precedent. With sanction  - Enforced by the state Legal - operate as binding rule of law, recognized and enforced by the courts. Local - prevails in definite locality or community, source of law for that place only. General - prevails throughout the country. E.g.: common law of England Conventional - “usages” – binding due to an agreement between parties and not due to any legal authority independently possessed by them. Conditions:  It must be shown that convention is clearly established and fully known to the contracting parties. No fixed period for which it should have been observed before recognized as binding. Must be reasonable and can't alter the law of the land....

It is impractical to try and give a clear and concrete forever definition of law. Multiple definitions are formed according to changing thought and need of the hour. Classification of definitions: 1.  Natural  Most of the ancient definitions fall under this category - Ulpine, Cicero, Justinian's Digest etc.  Ancient Hindu law considered law to be the command of God. Prominent jurist  Salmond  defined law as  “the body of principles recognized and applied by the State in the administration of justice.”  That is to say, rules recognized and acted on by courts of justice. To understand the law, one should know its purpose. And in order to ascertain the true nature of the law, one should go to the courts, not the legislature. (I.e. go to the people who interpret the laws, not the ones that write them.) 2.  Positivistic  "Law is the aggregate of rules set by man is politically superior or sovereign to men as politically subject....

Photo by  Bruno van der Kraan  on  Unsplash Since I left law school, I've realized that most people view the law as beyond their understanding. Intimidating, even. This is mere perception. Most legal matters can be translated into forms that make them easy to understand. So I want to share the first article I ever read in law school - The Case of the Speluncean Explorers  by Lon L. Fuller. The wiki summary of this (28 page) article can be found here.   The article was inspired by the infamous case of R vs Dudley and Stephens . Dudley and Stephens were shipwrecked along with two other men. When one of the other men - a cabin boy named Richard Parker - fell into a coma, he was killed and eaten by Dudley and Stephens. They were tried for murder after being rescued, found guilty, and sentenced to death. Considering that Dudley and Stephens would have died if they hadn't done what they did, public opinion called for mercy. In the end, they got a sentence o...