By Otunba Segun Showunmi
The growing crisis in public discourse is no longer merely political; it is jurisprudential. Increasingly, judicial decisions are interpreted not through the disciplined lens of legal reasoning but through the emotional appetites of partisan advocacy. Entire constitutional arguments are now erected upon obiter comments, speculative dicta, rhetorical observations, and extraneous judicial reflections wholly unnecessary to the resolution of the lis before the court. In the process, the true ratio decidendi is abandoned while inference masquerades as settled law.
This intellectual disorder is dangerous to constitutional democracy.
A court of law is not constituted to deliver abstract philosophical dissertations nor to issue political manifestos for public consumption. Judicial authority is invoked to determine specific controversies submitted through competent originating processes. The adjudicatory jurisdiction of the court is therefore circumscribed by the pleadings, the reliefs sought, the questions formulated for determination, and the evidential materials properly placed before it. Beyond these parameters, judicial commentary may possess persuasive value, but it does not necessarily acquire binding force.
This distinction is elementary within legal theory, yet persistently ignored in public debate.
The first obligation of any serious legal analyst is to identify the live issues joined by the parties. What was the cause of action? What reliefs were sought? What questions called for judicial determination? These matters are not cosmetic procedural formalities; they define the res in controversy. Consequently, any proposition not directly arising from the issues submitted for adjudication must be approached with doctrinal caution.
The tendency to isolate sensational passages from judgments while ignoring the operative holdings has produced widespread analytical confusion. A judgment must be read holistically. The law is not found in isolated paragraphs stripped from their procedural and factual context. It is found in the legal principle indispensable to the ultimate disposition of the matter.
That indispensable principle is the ratio decidendi.
The ratio decidendi constitutes the normative rule of law upon which the decision rests and without which the outcome would necessarily have been different. It is this principle and this principle alone that possesses precedential authority under the doctrine of stare decisis. Everything else, however forcefully expressed, falls within the category of obiter dicta: judicial observations made in passing, illustrations, hypothetical considerations, or advisory reflections unnecessary for the determination of the dispute.
This distinction becomes especially critical where courts dispose of matters on threshold issues such as locus standi, jurisdiction, competence, limitation, or abuse of court process. Once a court declines jurisdiction, every subsequent pronouncement on substantive questions ordinarily becomes merely academic. Yet it is astonishing how frequently lawyers, commentators, and political actors proceed to cite such academic observations as though they constituted definitive pronouncements on the merits.
Nothing illustrates the deterioration of legal culture more starkly than this practice.
Jurisdiction remains the lifeblood of adjudication. Where jurisdiction is absent, proceedings, no matter how brilliantly conducted, amount to a nullity. Consequently, where an appellate court resolves a dispute upon jurisdictional incompetence, every ancillary observation thereafter must be understood within its proper jurisprudential limitation. Courts themselves frequently signal this through phrases such as “assuming without deciding,” “even if I am wrong,” or “this issue has become merely academic.” Such language is not ornamental. It is doctrinally significant.
Unfortunately, contemporary political discourse rewards sensational interpretation rather than disciplined exegesis. Judgments are now treated as repositories for partisan validation. Selective quotation has become a substitute for principled legal analysis. Commentators routinely elevate persuasive dicta into enforceable constitutional doctrine simply because such dicta align with ideological preference.
But the law does not operate through emotional convenience.
The final orders of the court remain the clearest manifestation of what was truly adjudicated. The operative and dispositive portions of a judgment often reveal a far narrower holding than the surrounding commentary may suggest. A proper legal reading therefore requires constant interrogation of the nexus between the issues formulated, the findings made, and the consequential orders entered by the court.
The failure to maintain this analytical discipline carries grave institutional consequences. Once citizens begin attributing holdings to courts that the courts never in fact made, expectations become detached from legal reality. Public disappointment then mutates into distrust of the judiciary itself. Over time, institutional legitimacy suffers not necessarily because courts erred, but because society abandoned the discipline required to understand what courts actually decided.
This is why rigorous legal hermeneutics matters.
A judgment is not an authority for every proposition it appears superficially to contain. It is the authority only for what it necessarily decides. That principle remains one of the oldest safeguards against doctrinal confusion within the common law tradition.
The question every serious legal mind must therefore ask is neither what sounds persuasive nor what satisfies political instinct. The proper inquiry is far more precise: what exact issue required determination before the court could competently grant or refuse the relief sought?
That and only that is the real issue for adjudication.
Otunba Segun Showunmi
The Alternative.