Judicial precedent in the Nigerian legal system and a case for its application under international law

Abstract

Judicial precedent is an age-long feature of municipal judicial systems of the common law including Nigeria. The review of the practice in Nigeria reveals that its serves the cause of justice and makes predictability of the outcome of legal suits possible. Three models of judicial precedent have been identified and they comprise the natural model, the rule model and the result model. It is noted that International Court of Justice is not bound to follow judicial precedence in its decisions. The statute of the International Court of Justice expressly foreclosed the adoption of precedence in decisions of the court. This is an exclusion that impacts negatively on the cause of justice in  international judicial forum like the International Court of Justice. An amendment of the relevant article, Article 59, of the Statute of the International Court of Justice with the purpose of including this important judicial practice in arriving at the Court’s decisions is, therefore, suggested.