harmony between present rules and present needs.
None the less, the rule of adherence to precedent is applied with less rigidity in the United States than in England, and, I think, with a rigidity that is diminishing even here. The House of Lords holds itself absolutely bound by its own prior decisions.[1] The United States Supreme Court and the highest courts of the several states overrule their own prior decisions when manifestly erroneous.[2] Pollock, in a paper entitled "The Science of Case Law," written more than forty years ago, spoke of the freedom with which this was done, as suggesting that the law was nothing more than a matter of individual opinion.[3] Since then the tendency has, if anything, increased. An extreme illustration may be
- ↑ Gray, supra, sec. 462; Salmond, "Jurisprudence," p. 164, sec. 64; Pound, "Juristic Science and the Law," 31 Harvard L. R. 1053; London Street Tramways Co. v. London County Council, 1898, A. C. 375, 379.
- ↑ Pollock, "First Book of Jurisprudence," pp. 319, 320; Gray, "Judicial Precedents," 9 Harvard L. R. 27, 40.
- ↑ “Essays in Jurisprudence and Ethics," p. 245.
