judge-made law

judge-made law

Legal decisions by appellate courts that are binding on all future generations unless overruled by a later appellate court, but which are directly contradictory to specific statutes or earlier case authority. This happens rather often in real estate law, much of which arose out of peculiarities of life in the Middle Ages and before.When faced with a situation that would result in a seemingly unfair conclusion under applicable principles of law,the judges sometimes simply change the law.