Legal citation is the practice of crediting and referring to authoritative documents and sources. The most common sources of authority cited are court decisions (cases), statutes, regulations, government documents, treaties, and scholarly writing.
In common law legal systems, precedent is a principle or rule established in a previous legal case that is either binding on or persuasive for a court or other tribunal when deciding subsequent cases with similar issues or facts. Common-law legal systems place great value on deciding cases according to consistent principled rules, so that similar facts will yield similar and predictable outcomes, and observance of precedent is the mechanism by which that goal is attained. The principle by which judges are bound to precedents is known as stare decisis. Common-law precedent is a third kind of law, on equal footing with statutory law and delegated legislation or regulatory law.
In law, common law is that body of law derived from judicial decisions of courts and similar tribunals. The defining characteristic of “common law” is that it arises as precedent. In cases where the parties disagree on what the law is, a common law court looks to past precedential decisions of relevant courts, and synthesizes the principles of those past cases as applicable to the current facts. If a similar dispute has been resolved in the past, the court is usually bound to follow the reasoning used in the prior decision. If, however, the court finds that the current dispute is fundamentally distinct from all previous cases, and legislative statutes are either silent or ambiguous on the question, judges have the authority and duty to resolve the issue. The court states an opinion that gives reasons for the decision, and those reasons agglomerate with past decisions as precedent to bind future judges and litigants. Common law, as the body of law made by judges, stands in contrast to and on equal footing with statutes which are adopted through the legislative process, and regulations which are promulgated by the executive branch. Stare decisis, the principle that cases should be decided according to consistent principled rules so that similar facts will yield similar results, lies at the heart of all common law systems.
The case stems from a person moving from New York State to Pennsylvania. In Pennsylvania, he assumed, by common law, at will, the name of "J. D. McUlta", and then went bankrupt after several years of doing business under that name.
New York is a state in the Northeastern United States. New York was one of the original thirteen colonies that formed the United States. With an estimated 19.54 million residents in 2018, it is the fourth most populous state. To distinguish the state from the city with the same name, it is sometimes called New York State.
Pennsylvania, officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state located in the northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The Appalachian Mountains run through its middle. The Commonwealth is bordered by Delaware to the southeast, Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, Lake Erie and the Canadian province of Ontario to the northwest, New York to the north, and New Jersey to the east.
The ruling states that even if a court is granted permission to change a name by petition and decree, that permission does "not change the common-law rule that a man may lawfully change his name at will and will be bound by any contract into which he enters under his adopted or reputed name, and that he may sue and be sued in that name". Explicitly, a common law name change carries the same legal weight as a court-decreed name change. The ruling also uses term of art "at will", clarifying that common law allows name changes "at will" and no court-issued order of name change is required.
This case is also precedent that a person's name is irrelevant in regard to the person; rather, it only indicates the person. One may change one's name by common law, but the existence of that person does not change:
This exception charges the bankrupt with fraud in obtaining the goods and merchandise purchased, in that he did not inform his creditors of his right name, and therefore he did not obtain title to the goods which he claims as exempt. We dismiss this exemption. A name is used merely to designate a person or thing. It is the mark or indica to distinguish him from other persons, and that is as far as the law looks. In re Snook, supra; Rich v. Mayer (City Ct. N. Y.) 7 N. Y. Sup. 69, 70. They are merely used as means of indicating identity of persons. Meyer v. Indiana National Bank 27 Ind. App. 354, 61 N. E. 596. There is nothing in the evidence to show that any fraud was committed by the bankrupt in purchasing the goods. They were sold to him under his assumed name (the creditors never knew until after the institution of bankruptcy proceedings and the adjudication, that the bankrupt was doing business under an assumed name;) and he took title of the goods and could have disposed of them under his assumed name and given a good title to the same. Credit in this case was given to the man—not the name—and that man was J. D. McUlta.
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