In jury trials, I often hear the case of Senatus Populusque Romanus v. Yeshua bin Yusuf mentioned as persuasive authority.
“Your honor, in Merkel, Texas they speak of little else.” 
Yes, but it’s not the earliest case I’ve cited in a legal opinion, since the Case of Proclamations preceded it by five years. As well, since the Judicature Act of 1873, it’s been enshrined in statute law, so to cite the principle I usually would refer to our equivalent statutory provision.
Well, a 2003 Supreme Court decision concerning a dispute over the Potomac River also addressed 16th century royal charters. So this is clearly a continuing issue in American law.
Yes, the Supreme Court held that pre-Revolutionary charters were still valid in the Dartmouth College case in 1819.
I can think of two reasons offhand.
The first is that there absof*cklutely NO precedent on the particular technical point of law that you’re arguing in your jurisdiction (or in any other which might count as persuasive precedent, like another state of the Union in a US case), but the Roman statute comes pretty close and supports your position. The technical legal term for that is “grasping at straws.” 
The second is because the lawyer citing it is a pretentious prick, and is showing off. Back when I was a lawyer (I’m not now) I never had an opponent pull that kind of thing, but I regularly appeared before a judge who’d do it all the time to counsel (in fact he’d pop off weird questions like that during motion hearings; “Well, counselor, what would the Corpus Juris Civilis have to say about that question?”). I suspect he did it to opposing counsel when he was practicing.
Cheers,
bcg
One man’s “pretentious prick” is another’s “tactical genius.”
It’s not exactly the same, but I once confused a prosecutor so completely with a similar tactic that the Commonwealth ended up agreeing to time served on a really rather strong case. It was a larceny case in a common-law state, and I raised the question of whether the Commonwealth had proved both caption and asportation.
My judge was obviously not a “tactical genius”. 
ETA: I think it’s pretty evident when “pretentious prick” can be distinguished from “tactical genius”, though I’ve had at least one opponent of my acquaintance who was both. I think the technical legal term for that was “stick the knife in and then twist it.”
Cheers,
bcg
What Camus said.
True, but most landmark cases usually have had there principle reexpressed in statute. But at least a working knowledge of the case in needed.
In Islamic law, there is a case called the “lucky kinswoman case” on inheritance, which dates back to around 900 AD. Its not binding or even persuasive as such, but the facts were fairly unsusual so it has been continulay cited over the centuries.
While I’ve never cited law older than the Republic, I have used the somewhat different rhetorical flourish of noting that some principle or other goes back hundreds of years. I collaborated on a brief a few years ago where one of my colleagues cited the writings of William of Ockham. (We lost.)
Similarly, if I had any input on any of the extraordinary rendition/Gitmo detainess cases, I’d sure as fuck open with a citation to the Magna Carta, but again, that’s just policy, not law. (The due process provisions of the Magna Carta aren’t really apposite, but it makes clear that some notion of a due process requirement to imprison someone is a bedrock, founding notion in our law.)
–Cliffy
I thought the Defendant’s patronymic was bar Yousef. I tried to search the web for a proper citation, but alexandria.libr.eg.edu is down.
I well remember an overly enthusiastic junior counsel loading the case list in an appellate argument without his Queen’s Counsel’s close oversight.
At the hearing, the QC was interrupted by a malevolent trial judge who asked him for a specific submission on the significance of a particular case on the list. QC had obviously not gone into all the cases on the list (which he should have).
Junior counsel scurries through the piles of photocopy paper while QC is extemporising. QC then gets handed a copy of the case and sees …
that it is in medieval French.
Judge had a huge shit-eating grin on his face. “Well?” he said.
Silk sulked, and got the point - don’t waste everyone’s time with this excessive lawyering. The junior got torn a new one outside of court, so I hear.
Back to the OP, IME (for what it’s worth) ultimate courts of appeal in a given country like to set out the history of some particular legal issue, and expect counsel to go back to whatever foundational cases there are, and it is a matter of fortune just how far that is. This is just an extension of the academic preoccupation with completeness.
Cases in the English Reports (from the days when reports were still a matter of private enterprise) commonly get a mention. I would think the boundary is the point at which the cases are unintelligible, either because the English in incomprehensible or because they are not in English at all, but that is not absolute. One very occasionally sees passing citations to cases in the Year Books. And texts like Coke and Blackstone still get regular mentions.
But I should make clear, this is not citing the cases as precedent in the limited sense that statements in those cases are still binding. It is merely justifying the present decision by tracing its historical roots.
Other than historical exegesis, you have to have some justification for dragging out the old stuff, or the Court will think you are a wanker and will chip you for time wasting. No-one wants to hear about the Magna Carta in a bail application.
Nowadays, society is so litigious and legislatures so productive that the current authorities are almost certain to have overtaken the older ones for the overwhelming majority of cases.
//drive by//
Absolutely fascinating - I love the Dope. Nothing to add.
//end drive by//
:: Golf clap ::
The earliest case I ever cited was an English decision from the 1710s, IIRC, which I stumbled across in my research. It had never been reversed and was directly on point. I didn’t solely rely on it, though, as there was some much more recent Ohio caselaw that was analogous. The English case had a killer quotation that I just had to use. I’ve cited several Ohio cases from the earliest days of statehood (1803) now and then.
I think most courts will regard very old citations like that as an interesting (some would say overly cute or pedantic) tip of the hat to the long development of American law today, but if you have nothing more recent or controlling, it won’t get you far.
Well, one thing which I think most law students learn in court is that all precedents are merely persuasive. You may think that a ruling is binding, but if a judge dose’nt, well thats what matters.
Distinguishing the worst word in the legal lexicon, unless you are the one relying on it.
I think either is correct; Bar and Bin/Ben were Aramaic and Hebrew for “son of,” and both were used in the era. Spellings of Yosef/Yousef/Yusuf in the English alphabet will vary because they’re phonetic approximations, like how news media variously spells the leader of Libya’s name as Gaddafi, Qadafi, Khadafy, etc.
Thank you thank you.
Just an odd data point: The opinion in Pierson v. Post, an early NY case regarding property rights in “one of those noxious beasts called a fox,” cites to Justinian.
So…he wanted to fish for Vorpahl swordfish?