Question 3

Question 3
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(21 September 2011)
Question 3
In legal terms, precedence is considered to be a principle which is recognized in legal matters especially when a court is making decisions on preceding cases that are meant to contain same material facts. The principle regarding the precedent states that, all the cases that tends to be the same, should be given the same judgment. Initially, precedent was seen to be predictable since they were common laws. This resulted to lower courts being made to follow the judgments that were made by the superior courts in the same hierarchy (Bouvier, 1993). Nevertheless, by this, what was meant is, the Queensland Planning and Environment Court was supposed to take the decision made by of the Supreme Court of Queensland regarding the same issue. Consequently the Supreme Court must follow the same hierarchy by accepting the decisions made by the High Court of Australia.
The conflict arising from the case under study is that, two investors are investing in the same area but with different material facts on the investment and there is also a third party that is the public. This local resident action group has a feeling that both investors are interfering with the portion of the forestry land. The fact that this land wasn`t listed meant a lot and different interpretations could be arrived at in defining that piece of land.
The first scenario is where the first investor lost the case since he did not prove that the said land wasn`t actually gazette as a forestry land. However, the second investor can give material facts about the land not being a forestry land and it can be used for another purpose so long as it does not interfere with the residents. This material fact can overrule the first case and in favor of my client if and only if the Environmental Management Court was higher than the Supreme Court. Nevertheless, this is not the case hence the judgment of the Supreme Court will be effective.
In the second case, the sitting judge might make his decisions on the case to stand by the decided matters by the previous judge that is "Stare Decisis". This is where the court is directed to look to the judgments made before, of the similar case and make a judgment on the case. In this case, the client will be denied a chance in developing a rural property into a residential subdivision as it happened to the first venture (Watson, 2006).
In conclusion, precedence gives certainty, that is, the liberty to make a decision in each case as you think right without any looking upon on the laid down principles in similar cases. With certainty in place, there is an extent of flexibility and possibility of development has new rules can be established. Furthermore, precedence is also practical when it comes to handling cases (EPBC Act, 2010).
Nevertheless, a court lower in the Australian Judicial Hierarchy cannot overrule, reverse, or even distinguish the case made by a superior court but can only abide by their judgments. In the provided scenario, our client wi...