Obiter dictum

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An obiter dictum is literally a “statement made in passing”; tossed off, as it were, by a court en route to a different a legal determination (a “ratio decidendi”).

A chance remark; a passing observation; a bon mot not entirely on point to the matter at hand but which, if not strictly binding on a subsequently convened lower court, is apt to make it swoon with admiration all the same.

Perhaps the most famous obiter dictum of all times was that made by a young High Court judge sitting in the King’s Bench Division by the name of Denning, Central London Property Trust Ltd v High Trees House Ltd, which gave rise to the modern law of promissory estoppel.