Faculty Of Law The College Of Aberdeen

The House of Lords decided to permit itself to adapt English law to meet altering social circumstances. In R v G UKHL 50, the House of Lords overruled its 1981 determination in R v Caldwell, which had allowed the Lords to ascertain mens rea (“guilty mind”) by measuring a defendant’s conduct towards that of a “reasonable particular person”, whatever the defendant’s precise frame of mind. The opinion of Chief Justice John Roberts within the case June Medical Services, LLC v. Russo provides a clear statement of the sturdy conception of stare decisis. In this case, the Court upheld, by a 5–4 margin, their 2016 choice Law News in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt that struck down an identical Texas law requiring doctors who carry out abortions to have the proper to confess patients at a close-by hospital. Roberts wrote, “The legal doctrine of stare decisis requires us, absent special circumstances, to deal with like instances alike.” Roberts provided the fifth vote to uphold the 2016 choice, although he felt it was wrongly decided. The follow of citing earlier instances was to not discover binding legal guidelines but as proof of custom.