CONSISTENCY OF COURT DECISIONS THROUGH A CASE STUDY

The principle of the rule of law is one of the main components of the republic, which is included in Article 2 of the Constitution. The principle of the rule of law refers to an ideal, and the realization of this principle requires the provision of legal security as well as other requirements. The principle of legal security which imposes different obligations on three main bodies of the state, consists of three sub-principles including legal certainty, legal consistency and legal predictability. Being one of the auxiliary sources of law, especially in the field of administrative law, reasonable stability in the case law must be accomplished as a requirement of the principle of legal security. There should be a reasonable level of consistency among the decisions of courts in different jurisdictions, the decisions of different courts in the same jurisdiction and the decisions of the very same court on similar cases. The failure to achieve such consistency at the judicial or court level, as stated by the Constitutional Court in its decisions regarding many individual applications, may prevent the fulfillment of rights and may lead to a breach of the principle of legal certainty and the right to a fair trial. In this article consistency principle will be examined by considering The Council of State’s two different judicial decisions which were given by the same chamber, on the same date and about the same subject