Lay reliance on assumed outcomes should outweigh lawyers’ technical reliance on precedent
Evidence
Compare the reliance interest of the ater company with the reliance interest of customers such as Mr. Reimann who simply assumed that hydrants could be depended upon to produce water Aen water ,as needed. The latter would in all probability be the unsophisticated reliance of an untutored layman. The former might ell be the highly sophisticated reliance of a client tutored byr a lawyer with a rigid and formal conception of the doctrine of stare decisis. If to such reliance interests are in conflict, which should an enlightened legal system try to fulfill?
— Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process, 2384
Categorization
DEEPTHINKING: The passage poses the genuinely hard question at stare decisis’ heart: unsophisticated lay reliance versus sophisticated lawyerly reliance — whose expectations should a legal system honor?
XREF: Resonates with the polyad’s storytelling/interpretation thread: whose account of reliance counts as legible and authoritative. — connects to: Absence of unfair surprise never justifies overruling precedent alone — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process: Basic Problems in…, 2563; Legal outcomes depend on variable choices and value judgments rather than absolutes. — Ruggero J. Aldisert, Agatha D. Aldisert, Logic for Lawyers- A Guide to Clear…, 752; Stated precedent rules often fail to determine later case outcomes — Burton, Steven J, An Introduction to Law and Legal…, 216 (+3 more)