The unifying role of precedents from the supreme court's criminal division: Anatomy of a failure

Abstract

The Supreme Court's Criminal Chamber has mostly failed in the fulfillment of its task of unifying the case law, This result is associated to the lack of certain cultural and institutional conditions —and the legal—reasoning skills, that make that task possible in some other legal systems. The sole existence of a Criminal Chamber is one condition, but not enough to compensate the lack of the other ones.