Learning outcomes

After studying this course, you should be able to:

  • explain and distinguish fact-finding, decision-making and reason-giving

  • discuss the issue of bias in the common law

  • explain stare decisis and differentiate between ratio decidendi and obiter dicta

  • recognise that some legal rules are uncertain

  • discuss whether judges make law.

OpenLearn - Judicial decision making
ou logoCreative Commons non-commercial share alike icon Except for third party materials and otherwise, this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence, full copyright detail can be found in the acknowledgements section. Please see full copyright statement for details.