... to act with confidence, providing a stable environment to operate in. However in providing legal certainty there is a risk of rigidity, placing the law in such a state that it cannot respond to individual circumstances and perhaps more significantly a state where it cannot evolve to fulfil future demands. Thus a degree of flexibility is also crucial. Decisions made in higher courts have the prospect of being able to not agree with precedents acutely, if tools such as statutory interpretation are utilised. The doctrine of precedent will be evaluated against these criteria throughout this work and an evaluation made as to whether a good balance is achieved both in theory and in practice. In order to understand how the concepts of legal flexibility and certainty are affected by the doctrine of precedent a solid understanding of how it operates in both theory and practice is required. This work will ...

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