Decentralisation and The Evolution of Common Law

Marianne Ojo

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: This paper is aimed at highlighting how common law has evolved over the centuries, namely through the flexibility accorded to judicial precedents, as well as through the evolutionary nature evidenced in the processes and rules applied in statutory interpretation. In addition to illustrating how informational asymmetries can be mitigated through de centralisation, facilitated with courts employing the use of non-legal agents such as expert witnesses - as evidenced in the Daubert case, Pepper v Hart also illustrates how common law has evolved through the scope and permissibility of aids to statutory interpretation. Whilst financial markets and changes in the environment impact legislators, and whilst it is widely accepted that legislation constitutes the supreme form of law, the necessity for judges to introduce a certain level of flexibility will also contribute towards ensuring that legitimate expectations of involved parties are achieved - particularly where the construction of the words within a statute gives rise to considerable ambiguity. By way of reference to landmark rulings in the United States, cases such as Daubert and The Estate of Edgar A. Berg v. Commissioner, this paper also aims to illustrate the vital role increasingly assumed by non-legal actors, and why this approach should constitute a trend to be adopted in European common and civil law jurisdictions. This being the case given the failures and flaws of references to Parliamentary material and whether these should be permitted as an aid to the construction of legislation which is ambiguous or obscure, as illustrated in the case of Pepper v Hart.

Keywords: legitimate expectations; certainty; flexibility; judicial precedents; statutory interpretation; allocative efficiency; Pepper v Hart; Daubert; common law; regulatory capture; regulation; The Estate of Edgar A. Berg v. Commissioner (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D8 E2 F6 G3 L5 M4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-07-28
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-law and nep-mac
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/65803/1/MPRA_paper_65803.pdf original version (application/pdf)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/70899/1/MPRA_paper_65803.pdf revised version (application/pdf)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/70792/1/MPRA_paper_70792.pdf revised version (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:65803

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter ().