23 August 2026
Precedent — bindingness and departure. *London Tramways*, the 1966 Practice Statement, and
Essay due Saturday 29 August.
"In 1898 the House of Lords declared itself absolutely bound by its own decisions; in 1966 it released itself by a three-paragraph statement made in no case, deciding no dispute, hearing no argument. Either the House was never truly bound, or the Statement was an act it had no power to perform." Discuss, with reference to London Street Tramways, the Practice Statement, and British Railways Board v Herrington. If your answer at the last tutorial was right — that the Lords departed silently long before 1966 — what exactly did the Statement change?
The reading
7 texts this week
No clean answer. The orthodox position — self-imposed practice, alterable by the court that imposed it — is defensible, and must then explain what "bound" meant for sixty-eight years. The contrary — never truly bound — is defensible, and must then explain why the Statement was thought necessary at all, and why departures since have been so rare. He must choose, and the final sentence collects the debt from his own last answer.
Set 23 August 2026. Every item links either to a source Socratess chose, or to a search for it.
Note on this set. This set is the last question of the week 1 tutorial, made into a week. He answered, at the edge, that the Lords of 1932 were bound by their own decisions and "departed silently... masked by the framework." That answer is the right shape and entirely unproven. Now he proves it or abandons it.
- Set
- 23 August 2026
- Essay due
- 29 August 2026
- Tutorial
- 30 August 2026
The question
"In 1898 the House of Lords declared itself absolutely bound by its own decisions; in 1966 it released itself by a three-paragraph statement made in no case, deciding no dispute, hearing no argument. Either the House was never truly bound, or the Statement was an act it had no power to perform." Discuss, with reference to London Street Tramways, the Practice Statement, and British Railways Board v Herrington. If your answer at the last tutorial was right — that the Lords departed silently long before 1966 — what exactly did the Statement change?
No clean answer. The orthodox position — self-imposed practice, alterable by the court that imposed it — is defensible, and must then explain what "bound" meant for sixty-eight years. The contrary — never truly bound — is defensible, and must then explain why the Statement was thought necessary at all, and why departures since have been so rare. He must choose, and the final sentence collects the debt from his own last answer.
Reading (7 items)
Primary
- 1.London Street Tramways Co Ltd v London County Council [1898] AC 375 (HL).
- 2.Practice Statement (Judicial Precedent) [1966] 1 WLR 1234reread; last week it was context, this week it is the text under examination. Every word of its three paragraphs.
- 3.British Railways Board v Herrington [1972] AC 877 (HL), read against the case it departed from, Robert Addie & Sons (Collieries) Ltd v Dumbreck [1929] AC 358 (HL).
Textbook
- 4.Rupert Cross & J.W. Harris, Precedent in English Law (4th edn, Clarendon Press 1991), ch 1.
Articles
- 5.Julius Stone, '1966 and All That! Loosing the Chains of Precedent' (1969) 69 Columbia Law Review 1162.
- 6.A.L. Goodhart, 'Precedent in English and Continental Law' (1934) 50 Law Quarterly Review 40.
- 7.Alan Paterson, The Law Lords (Macmillan 1982)the treatment of how the Lords actually used, and mostly declined to use, the 1966 freedom.
Socratess on this list. Seven items again: item 7 is the push, carried on the same terms as last week. He is not expected to finish all of it; choosing what to read properly is part of the exercise.