The Doctrine The doctrine of precedents is based on the need for legal certainty. This means that lawyers can properly advise their clients on the basis that similar cases will be treated equally, rather than judges making their own random decisions that no one could have predicted. This helps people plan their affairs. According to Lord Denning, “it forms the foundation of our jurisprudential system”. However Denning was "against its too rigid application – a rigidity which insists that a bad precedent must necessarily be followed". It is the rigidity of the doctrine that can prevent developments aimed at meeting the changing needs of society. However, this was recognized in the House of Lords Practice Statement of 1996. Furthermore, lower court judges are adept at avoiding the rigidity of the doctrine. A judge can distinguish inconvenient precedent on the facts, arguing that the facts of the present case are different in some important way from those of the previous case and therefore the rule does not apply. Precedent can be distinguished on a question of law; arguing that the legal question answered by the precedent is not the same as that posed in the present case. Courts may distinguish precedent by stating that the precedent has been superseded by more recent decisions, and is therefore obsolete. Courts may give the precedent a very narrow ratio decidendi interpretation or argue that the precedent does not have a clear ratio decidendi, for example because the ratio of one judge in one case is different from that of others in the same case. Courts can cla...... middle of paper ......t of the Human Rights Act 1998 is still uncertain. But there is no doubt that jurisprudence will be developed according to the changing needs of society, for example that our privacy should be respected. Before the Act, the courts followed Kaye v Robinson in denying the right to privacy. However, in the groundbreaking case of Douglas vHello Ltd., Sedley LJ said that there is “a right to privacy which English law will today recognize and, where appropriate, protect”. That said, there is no privacy violation yet. Finally, there are a number of "moral cases" in which the changing mores of society are recognized. For example, in the case of Gillick v West Norfolk AHA, the question was whether it was morally acceptable to prescribe contraceptives to children under 16 without parental consent. It was and this reflects the way we live today.