Jersey Law - Precedent and Law Reporting

Precedent and Law Reporting

The Jersey legal system does not follow the strict rules of binding precedent that exist common law jurisdictions such as England and Wales. The Royal Court is not bound by its own previous decisions on a point of law but it will generally follow them unless persuaded that the earlier decision was wrongly decided. A similar approach is taken by the Court of Appeal. All Jersey courts are, however, bound by points of law decided by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in previous Jersey appeals to that court.

During the 19th and 20th centuries a series of improvements to the system of writing and reporting judgments was put in place. In 1885, the Royal Court began to publish the Tables des Décisions de la Cour Royal de Jersey–a subject index to decided cases, prepared by the Greffier.

In 1950, C.T. Le Quesne KC returned to Jersey from practice at the English Bar and was appointed Lieutenant Bailiff. Up to this point, the Royal Court's judgments were in the French style of jugements motivés, written in French by the Greffier rather than the judge, and expressing the reasons for the court's decision only very briefly. Le Quesne changed the language of judgments to English and adopted the common law style of judgments, where the judge gives detailed reasons for accepting or rejecting the rival submissions made at trial by counsel. Between 1950 and 1984, the Royal Court published its and the Court of Appeal judgments in a series of law reports known as the Jersey Judgments (eleven volumes in total). From 1984, judgments have been published a new new series of law reports known as the Jersey Law Reports.

In 2004, the Jersey Legal Information Board (JLIB) was set-up to promote "accessibility of the written law and legal processes to the public and of an integrated and efficient legal system, through the use of information technology and by other means". Judgments of the Royal Court and Court of Appeal are published online on www.jerseylaw.je, with open access to "unreported" judgments as part of the Free Access to Law Movement.