Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2021
Subjects
prospective invalidation, prospective quashing, non-retrospective, retroactive, judicial method, stare decisis, policy, Independent Review of Administrative Law, IRAL, mistake of law, declaratory theory, limitations, suspended declaration, judicial dialogue, judicial activism, judicial review
Abstract
Judges have a dual role: they decide cases and they determine the law. These functions are conventionally understood to be intertwined: adjudication leads to case law, and disputes over judge-made laws lead to adjudication. Because judgments involve the resolution of past disputes, judge-made law is retrospective. The retrospective nature of judicial law-making can seem to work an injustice in hard cases. It appears unfair and inefficient for novel judicial decisions to apply to conduct occurring prior to the date judgment is handed down. A proposed solution is to separate the law-making and adjudicatory functions of courts. This is the technique of “prospective overruling”. Utilising this technique, courts seek to change the law prospectively for future cases, while continuing to decide past disputes under the “old” legal rule that was thought to apply at the time those disputes arose. This article challenges the claims that the exceptional juridical technique of prospective overruling is justified by values of stability, reliance, efficiency, dignity, and equality. These values, when properly understood, actually support rather than undermine the retrospectivity of judge-made law. Prospective overruling is an injudicious instrument.
Citation Details
Samuel Beswick, "Prospective Overruling Unravelled" [forthcoming 2022] 41 CJQ.