Judicial Precedents constitute an important source of law and is invariably of considerable assistance in the determination of controversies that arise in courts of Bangladesh. It is based on the English doctrine of judicial precedent.

When a court of law decides a case presented to it, it dis. poses of the conflicting claims advanced before it by the parties to the cause and renders what is called 'Judgment. The judgment rendered by the court concludes the controversies between parties to the cause and is binding on them subject to the decision being upset by a higher court, list, in the process of reaching a conclusion upon a controversy, the court itself evolves a rule which it follows in the decision of the case, and it is this rule or what may be called as "reason for deciding case", which is also known as ratio decidendi, to which some measure of authority gets attached, and it in its turn, acquires within limits a binding value as a creative source of law for the purpose of settling cognate controversies that may arise during the course of subsequent litigation. Thus it is that law is made in the process of reaching a judicial decision. The binding value of a principle of law enunciated in a judgment is the authority of judicial precedent and in order to achieve consistency, the Judges place great reliance on previous judgments given in similar cases. In the theory of jurisprudence in this country the general rule regarding the authority of judicial precedent is that every court binds the co-ordinate courts and the subordinate or lower courts. When a higher court upsets or reverses a case decided by a lower court, the case that is reversed loses alt authority as a precedent. Over-ruling takes place when a case decided in a lower court considered either in that case or in a different case taken to the appeal court and held to be wrongly decided.

In Bangladesh, the position of the binding force of judgments of superior court is comparatively simple, the two rules governing it being, that the decisions of the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court can question of law or when it enunciates a principle of law, are binding on all courts in Bangladesh, with the exception of the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court itself; and that similar decisions of the High Court Division of the Supreme Court are binding on the courts subordinate to the High Court Division. This has been constitutionally provided for in Article Ill which is in the following terms: "The law declared by the Appellate Division shall be binding on the High Court Division and the law declared by -either division of the Supreme Court shall be binding on all courts subordinate to it". However, the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of Bangladesh has declared that the judgment passed by the erstwhile Supreme Court of Pakistan after the proclamation of independence and before Liberation of Bangladesh will be binding upon the courts of Bangladesh.' In all other cusses, a judge, however high or low, is to decide a question of law for himself. The Appellate Division of the Supreme Court itself may change its own view of an earlier decision. The High Court Division is bound by the exposition of the law contained in the judgments of the Appellate Divisions; but it can depart from its own earlier declaration of law.

The decision of the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court being an institutional decision, it is the decision of the majority that is binding. Where the Marjory judgment is written by one Judge with the concurrence of the other Judges, the principle of law enunciated is to be gathered from the ratio decidendi even obiter dicta is also regarded as the law declared.

The legal history of Bangladesh presents an ever growing stream of case law, a stream, which keeps up moving with a steadily increasing momentum with the passage of time. This stream has been fed, by a current of legal decisions in-so-far as they have evolved legal principles and made them applicable to the problems that have been presented to Site Courts daring the course of day-to-day litigation, the task of reporting case law bring performed by the Law Reports which in Bangladesh, publish the judicial decisions of the superior courts as well as those of other tribunals. Law reporting in the Sub-continent is more than a century old. Legal journalism gained field to-words the end of the Nineteenth century and an Act called 'The Law Reports Act, 1875" Was passed for the improvement of the law reports.

In Bangladesh, presently, there exists three Law Reports which publish the case-law determined by the superior court and includes one which is published under the authority of the Statute.' Besides, cases of statutory tribunals are also published locally in local law journals. Decisions of statutory tribunals are also published in the Gazette, which is, of course, not a law journal. At present case law is contained in about ten thousand reported cases of different courts.