ABSTRACT
How the courts are bound House of Lords Decisions of the House of Lords bind all lower courts. The House of Lords itself is bound to follow rulings from the European Court of Justice. Since the Practice Statement (1966), the Lords do not have to follow their own past decisions. This allows flexibility in the law. In R v R (1991), the House of Lords overturned hundreds of years of precedent by ruling that a man could be found guilty of the rape of his wife.
