Blackstone's Tower: The English Law School - College of Social ...

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"A case is the written memorandum of a dispute or controversy between
persons, telling with varying degrees of completeness and of accuracy,
what happened, what each of the parties did about it, what some
supposedly impartial judge or other tribunal did in the way of bringing
the dispute or controversy to an end, and the avowed reasons of the
judge or tribunal for doing what was done." 26
The great majority of cases to be found in modern English law
reports emanate from superior courts; some specialised series
report decisions of tribunals, arbitrations and other adjudicators.
Cases have been selected for inclusion for one main reason: the
facts raised and the court purported to resolve one or more contested
issues of law. There was a doubt about the law and the
court's decision represents an authoritative answer to the
question(s) of law involved. That is what is meant by a precedent.
Let us pause to look briefly at just one volume from this massive
collection. The volume I have chosen, almost at random, is the
fourth volume of the All England Law Reports for 1991. It is bound
in Royal Blue with gold lettering on the spine. It is published by
Butterworths, who provide regular services to subscribers, including
weekly unbound parts, tables and indexes and an annual
review. This volume contains 16 pages of preliminary material and
992 pages of reports of cases. 27 The preliminary material includes
an alphabetical "digest" of the cases reported, classified according
to legal categories, from Action to Writ. From this we can see that
just under 100 cases are reported in this volume; about 60 per
cent, are decisions of the highest courts, the House of Lords, the
Court of Appeal, and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council.
Those of the Court of Appeal are, as usual, the most numerous.
The spread of topics is broad: there are nearly 60 headings in the
digest, with Criminal Law (11), Practice (14) and Ecclesiastical Law
(4) having the most entries. One case can appear under several
headings. The parties are also varied, including multi-national
companies, ministers, local authorities, universities, newspapers,
individuals charged with a variety of offences and ordinary citizens.
The amount at stake, in both human and financial terms, is also
varied: they range from disputes involving millions of pounds to a
question about the right of a parishioner to reserve a grave space
in a churchyard; from cases involving homicide and rape to a prosecution
for outraging public decency through lewd, obscene or
disgusting behaviour, in this instance leaving notes in public places
seeking preliminary meetings with boys. The spread, at first sight,
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