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Precedent is a judicial decision that serves as an authority for courts when deciding subsequent identical or similar cases. [1] [2] [3] Fundamental to common law legal systems, precedent operates under the principle of stare decisis ("to stand by things decided"), where past judicial decisions serve as case law to guide future rulings, thus promoting consistency and predictability.
Diamond v. Chakrabarty, 447 U.S. 303 (1980), was a United States Supreme Court case dealing with whether living organisms can be patented.Writing for a five-justice majority, Chief Justice Warren E. Burger held that human-made bacteria could be patented under the patent laws of the United States because such an invention constituted a "manufacture" or "composition of matter".
Where a wide new class of distinguished cases is made, such as distinguishing all cases on privity of contract law in the establishment of the court-made tort of negligence or a case turns on too narrow a set of variations in facts ("turns on its own facts") compared to the routinely applicable precedent(s), such decisions are at high risk of being successfully overruled (by higher courts) on ...
A simple concurring opinion arises when a judge joins the decision of the court but has something to add. Concurring in judgment means that the judge agrees with the majority decision (the case's ultimate outcome in terms of who wins and who loses) but not with the reasoning of the majority opinion (why one side wins and the other loses).
If this occurs, then the decision of the court below is affirmed, but the case is not considered to be binding precedent. The effect is a return to the status quo ante. No opinions (or voting alignments) are issued in such a case, only the one-sentence announcement that "[t]he judgment is affirmed by an equally divided Court."
Edwards v. Aguillard, 482 U.S. 578 (1987), was a United States Supreme Court case concerning the constitutionality of teaching creationism.The Court considered a Louisiana law requiring that where evolutionary science was taught in public schools, creation science must also be taught.
Teaching intelligent design in public school biology classes violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States (and Article I, Section 3, of the Pennsylvania State Constitution) because intelligent design is not science and "cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious ...
Fletcher v. Peck, 10 U.S. (6 Cranch) 87 (1810), was a landmark United States Supreme Court decision in which the Supreme Court first ruled a state law unconstitutional. The decision created a growing precedent for the sanctity of legal contracts and hinted that Native Americans did not hold complete title to their own lands (an idea fully realized in Johnson v.