Legal Question in Business Law in Australia

Re: Doctrine of Precedent

This isn't a Law Guru question, it is a question for a jurisprudence examination!

In a nutshell - in common law jurisdictions judges are obliged to follow the decisions of judges of courts superior to them.

So, in Australia decisions of the Full High Court are followed by courts in the Federal and state jurisdictions. Next in the hierarchy are the courts of appeal in the various states (and the full federal court), then single judge decisions in the supreme court and so on.

Decisons can be distinguished on their facts but in general one would expect decisions to be uniform given similar facts.

Doctoral thesis have been written on this topic so this is necessarily a very cursory answer.

I hope it helps.