Okay, I'm struggling with some of the concepts in Legal Studies and my teacher seems incapable of helping me at all so I'll just ask here..
When a judge distinguishes a case from another in order to avoid having to follow precedent, does their judgement on the case before them then become a new precedent based on the facts he distinguished from the original case? Or is it simply a way of avoiding preceden?
It is a way of saying that the precedent argued is not relevant to their case. If they are a higher court it will simply be a way of rejecting one party's legal argument, but if it's a lower court it will be a way of making the precedent persuasive and avoiding it.
If the court is high enough and they choose to establish a new ratio for the different facts, their decision will set precedent. If, however, the judge distinguishes one precedent but decides to follow another one they won't be setting a new one. If the Mag's or County distinguishes a precedent they can make their own decision, but they're not high enough to set precedent anyway!
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