i love commercial law!!

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.............. meaning of the doctrine of precedent ........... explain clearly in your own words, giving examples to the different aspects .............. include in your answer any advantages or disadvantages of this doctrine.

the doctrine of precedent is developed to ensure some form of consistency in the decisions made by judges. there are two forms of precedents, the binding precedent and the persuasive precedent.

binding precedent occurs when a decision made by a higher court must be followed by a lower court. the facts of the cases must be substantially similar.
for example, if a serial killer in the blue mountains is caught, and if his methods are similar to another serial killer apprehended previously in sydney central, then the sentence given to the blue mountains killer should be similar to the sentence given to the sydney central killer.

persuasive precedent happens when the decisions made by courts in other jurisdictions or a lower court in the same hierarchy serve to influence the decisions made by the higher court. these precedents are only guidelines and the higher court need not conform its decisions to them.
again, take the serial killer scenario. for ease of reference, the serial killer from the blue mountains will be referred to as BM, and the sydney central dude will be called SC. now, if SC killed three people before being apprehended, he'll get a sentence of maybe 10 or 20 years. but if BM killed 15 people before getting caught, his case will obviously be held in a higher court, and he will probably get the death sentence or life imprisonment. this is because while both cases are very similar, BM's sentence will be far more severe, because his crimes are far more serious in magnitude.

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that's the closest i can get to replicate what i wrote, but the essence is there.

pity they don't let us get back our test papers. i'd have framed this one.

boy, i really hope the person who marks my paper has a healthy sense of humour...