There is no court of appeal, and no court of cassation, so the judiciary, as far as the method by which the cases are treated, is of a single level. If the judge pronounced a verdict, it would become binding, and it cannot ever be annulled by the verdict of another judge unless he ruled by other than Islam, or contradicted a definite text from the Quran, Sunnah or Ijmaa’ of the companions, or it became clear that he gave a verdict that contradicted the reality of the situation.

This article explains that the ruling of a judge cannot be annulled, neither by himself nor by any other judge. The evidence that the ruling of the judge is not annulled is that the companions had an Ijma’ upon it. Abu Bakr (ra) ruled in the issues according to his Ijtihad, and Umar (ra) differed with him and did not annul his rulings, and Ali (ra) differed with Umar (ra) in his Ijtihad and did not annul his rulings, and Ali (ra) disagreed with both Abu Bakr (ra) and Umar (ra) and did not annul their rulings. The people of Najran came to ‘Ali (ra) and said “O leader of the believers, the judgement is in your hands and your pardon is with your own tongue”. He said: “Woe to you, Umar was rightly guided and I will not reverse a judgement pronounced by Umar.” It has been reported that Umar (ra) judged that in the shared inheritance, the rights of brothers from the father’s side are abrogated. He then ordered that they have a share, and then said “That sentence applies to that case and this sentence applies to this one”, and he executed both sentences despite the contradiction. This was mentioned by Ibn Qudamah in Al-Mughni and Al-Bayhaqi from Al-Hakam Bin Mas’ud Al-Thaqafi. He also judged differently in relation to the grandfather and he never reversed any of the earlier sentences, as is mentioned by Al-Bayhaqi in Al-Sunan Al-Kubra.

As for what has been reported about Shurayh (the judge) having judged in the case of two paternal cousins, where one of them was one of the mother’s brothers, that the estate should go to the brother, this was referred to Ali (ra) who said “Bring him to me”. When he came he said to him “Where in the Book of Allah did you find this?" He said Allah (swt) says,