Legal value of a precedent in Vietnam

Resolution 49/NQ-TW of 2005 by the Politburo of Vietnam on the Judicial Reform Strategy until 2010 states: "The Supreme People's Court has the task of summarizing trial experience, guiding the uniform application of the law, developing precedents, and conducting appellate and cassation trials."

The regulations regarding the tasks of the Judicial Council of the Supreme People's Court, in Clause 2, Article 22 of the Law on the Organization of People's Courts 2014, state: "Selecting the precedent decision of the Judicial Council of the Supreme People's Court, the effective judgments and decisions with the legal force, the standard of the Courts, summarizing the development into precedents, and publishing precedents for the Courts to study and apply in trials."

What is precedent? What is the legal value of a precedent in Vietnam?

According to the provisions of Article 1 of Resolution 03/2015/NQ-HDTP on the process of selecting, publishing, and applying precedents issued by the Judicial Council of the Supreme People's Court:

Precedents are understood as the arguments and judgments in the effective judgments and decisions of the Court regarding a specific case that the Judicial Council of the Supreme People's Court selects and the Chief Justice of the Supreme People's Court announces as precedents for the Courts to study and apply in trials.

According to the perspective of legal scholars in the Anglo-American legal system, precedents have two meanings:

In a narrow sense, precedents include all decisions and judgments declared by the Court and have the legal force to be sources of law, establishing principles and foundations for their application to similar cases in the future or using existing principles as a basis for deciding future cases.

In a broader sense, precedents are mandatory principles that require Judges in the system of Courts to rely directly on previous judgments, especially the decisions of higher-level Courts, Appellate Courts, and the Supreme Court, or principles not defined by law but established through judicial decisions, or a system of established principles that have been recognized and formed through Court decisions.

In countries following the continental European legal system (Civil Law system), such as France, Germany, Italy, and Japan, precedents are considered a means of legal interpretation. These judgments are not considered laws and do not have binding legal effect, but lower Courts must refer to them as there is a high risk of being overruled by higher Courts.

The basis for the formation of precedents is the shortcomings of the legal system. When there are shortcomings in the legal system, the Court will refer to legal grounds considered reasonable to make a groundbreaking judgment, and this judgment will be announced by the Supreme Court as a precedent to be applied to similar cases due to the lack of clear legal provisions or references.

In some countries, the concept of precedents is also referred to as legal precedents, which are one of the official and important sources of the legal system of the country and are widely applied. Accordingly, the judgments and decisions in the precedent journals become models, serving as the basis for the Court to make judgments in similar cases later. Legal precedents in foreign countries are also part of the process of the Court recognizing and applying new principles in trials.

It can be seen that in the context of our State's legal system, which is not yet fully completed and constantly changing to be in line with the Party and State's direction and policy, the construction of a socialist-oriented market economy with various forms of ownership and economic components, in which the state economy plays a leading role and integration into the world economy is deepening, Moreover, the practice is diverse and rich, so the selection and issuance of precedents to ensure uniformity in the application of legal content in our Court system is indeed very difficult but necessary.

Please Login to be able to download