Law Dictionary

disapprove

Concordancer & Text Finder software shows how “disapprove” has been used in the courts. The search of a 1m. civil case report corpus produced 37 instances, 75% of which fit the specialist legal use of a judge or court “disapproving” a decision or judgment of a lower court in a precedent case. To be distinguished from "distinguish" or "overrule".

From Murphy v Brentwood (1990):
"...the old view was that any departure from rigid adherences to precedent would weaken [the certainty in the law]. I did not and do not accept that view. It is notorious that where an existing decision is disapproved but cannot be overruled courts tend to distinguish it on inadequate grounds. I do not think that they act wrongly in so doing."

Source : Concordancer & Text Finder - Nigel Bruce

Language : English

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