Inflation
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Abstract
of the House of Lords on an English appeal, purporting to lay down rules for Scots law, binds the Scottish courts, and vice versa. Similarly, it is doubtful bow far regional courts of appeal (e.g., the East African Court of Appeal) bind courts of the constituent territories of the community when the appeal comes from one territory and is to be applied in another. It would be inappropriate, ina note of this description, to consider all the authorities, but it is submitted that the fundamental question is the nature of the Privy Council as an appellate body. When it sits on an appeal from a court in a Commonwealth country it is clear that it sits as the supreme appellate tribunal from that country—not as the supreme court of a tightly knit Empire with a common allegiance, common constitution and common laws. It has accepted that the courts in Commonwealth countries may, for policy reasons, adopt differing interpretations of the common law and that it should not interfere with such interpretations. Regarded in this light, it seems inappropriate that iti decisions should have automatic binding force and it is certainly arguable that the development of the common law is better served by permitting courts of roughly equal status, with full knowledge of each other's decisions, to develop that law in the light of their own constitutional and social institutions.