Litigation Commons^™

Precedent And Preclusion, Alan M. Trammell

Scholarly Articles

Preclusion rules prevent parties from revisiting matters that they have already litigated. A corollary of that principle is that preclusion usually does not apply to nonparties, who have not yet benefited from their own “day in court.” But precedent works the other way around. Binding precedent applies to litigants in a future case, even those who never had an opportunity to participate in the precedent-creating lawsuit. The doctrines once operated in distinct spheres, but today they often govern the same questions and apply under the same circumstances, yet to achieve opposite ends. Why, then, does due process promise someone a …