Abstract
Any complete account of legal analysis using precedents must include a model of ratio decidendi, the content of a precedent that is authoritative as to subsequent cases. Predicting, advocating, and justifying the binding effect of a precedent on subsequent cases all require identifying the authoritative elements of the precedent and showing how they can apply to subsequent cases involving different facts. Although the very existence of ratio decidendi is a disputed question among legal scholars, a functioning system of precedent rests on the assumption that some consensus can be reached concerning the the authoritative content of precedents (MacCormick, 1987) p. 157.
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References
This chapter includes material originally appearing in (Branting, 1994a).
See (Collier, 1988) for a detailed comparison of these two approaches.
The United States Supreme Court in Carroll v. Carroll’s Lessee,57 U.S. 128, 136, 16 How. 275, 286–287 (1853) similarly observed that “if [statements] go beyond the case, they may be respected, but ought not to control the judgment in a subsequent suit.”
A.C. 562 (1932).
For further discussion of the multiple levels of abstraction at which the holding of a case can be expressed, see (Stone, 1947) and (Stone, 1959).
Lew. C. C. 179 (1830).
Cox C. C. 163 (1883). L. R. 2 Ex. 259 (1867).
N.Y. 407, 14 N.E.2d 455 (1938).
N.Y. 288, 62 N.E.2d 74 (1945).
N.Y.2d 473, 473 N.Y.S. 743, 191 N.E.2d 279 (1963).
N.Y. 155, 124 N.E.2d 99 (1954).
N.Y.2d 554, 175 N.E.2d 441, 216 N.Y.S.2d 65 (1961).
N.Y.2d 34, 172 N.E.2d 526, 211 N.Y.D.2d 133 (1961).
This representation is also referred to as an AND/OR graph (Barr and Feigenbaum, 1982). In this particular graph, there are no OR branches, just AND branches.
Figure 3.2 is, in fact, a more detailed version of the right branch of the warrant-reduction graph shown in Figure 2.1.
Alternatively, the top-most warrant of the justification could be formulated as a biconditional, e.g., duty & breach & proximate cause IFF negligence. The warrant IF (no duty) or (no breach) or (no proximate cause) THEN negligence would follow directly from this biconditional. I believe that this approach is less satisfactory than an appeal to the closed-world assumption because there is often ambiguity concerning whether a rule is actually intended to be a conditional or a biconditional (Allen and Saxon, 1991). However, it should be noted that the use of the closed-world assumption in Figure 3.3 and in subsequent justifications in this chapter applies to rules rather than to domain propositions, as in more typical models of legal burden of proof, e.g.,(Farley and Freeman, 1995).
This warrant was expressed by the dissent in Palsgraf v. Long Island R.R. Co.,248 N.Y. 399, 162 N.E. 99 (1928).
U.S. 483 (1954). 27163 U.S. 537 (1896).
It has been noted that exemplar-based categories tend to be “hyper-polygons whose edges maintain equal `distance’ from nearest examples of different classes, where distance is measured by the system’s similarity metric. These boundaries are somewhat analogous to contours of zero potential between positive and negative electric charges in physical space” (Clark, 1988a).
An argument for the infeasibility of devising such a weighting scheme is made in (Ashley and Rissland, 1988).
A model of explicit choices among competing rules of decision is proposed in (Prakken and Sartor, 1998).
One description of the prototypes-and-deformations model suggests that it may be intended to apply to the explanations, as well as the facts, of precedents ( McCarty, 1991 ). This refinement would represent a departure from the simple exemplar-based approach and therefore from the applicability of Cross’s critique.
E. & B. 678 (1853).
The task of automatically generating plausible justifications to bridge gaps in the reasoning of precedents is a form of abduction (Pople, 1973).
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Branting, L.K. (2000). A Formal Model of Ratio Decidendi. In: Reasoning with Rules and Precedents. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2848-5_3
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