Reference no: EM132532322

Electronic Discovery

Legal precedent is the concept that once a law is applied in one way, that interpretation becomes law. We inherited this concept from the British legal system.

In the infamous Dred Scott decision, the US Supreme Court made a serious of tremendous blunders in determining that Mr. Scott was neither a person with rights nor could ever be given full rights that of other Americans.

This is an example how the principle of precedent is applied in our judicial system. In order to overcome these interpretations, the US had to ratify 3 constitutional amendments to overcome its hold on the legal system.

However, precent is not always equally applied. For example, the right to privacy precedent has not been applied to comparable aspects of the Affordable Care Act or the war on drugs.

In your opinion, how much weight should a judgement from a prior case have on future cases? Is it a good thing to keep consistency or should it be easier to overturn bad precent (with the understanding that good precedent could just as easily be overturned). How much of a "living document" should our constitution be?