"Discuss the disadvantages of judicial precedent." AQA A Level Law, 2017.

Judicial precedent is the incremental approach of justices in following previous case law decisions in order to maintain a stable basis for UK common law.
One disadvantage is that, due to the uncodified nature of UK common law, applying previous precedents is an incredibly complex process. Whilst in Caparo Industries -v- Dickman [1995] it was ruled that the categories of duty of care in Tort Law were to be applied as the Caparo 'rule', the case of Darnley -v- Croydon NHS Trust [2018] declared that this case had been incorrectly applied the 1995 Court. The UK's uncodified constitution means case law is not contained within one place, and so differing weight is often placed upon the ratios of certain cases which allows too much discretion to judges in determining relevant previous precedents. When coupled with judicial activism in cases such as these, much of case law is not representative of the actual law but rather judges' opinion of this law. Thus, judges autonomously deciding the value of relevant case law precedents has historically led to multiple overturned judgements such as in Darnley. It is testament to the complex and confusing nature of case law that judges often do not know which precedents to apply and where to find the relevant precedents for each case - one major disadvantage of judicial precedents.
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