The sequence being that a Muslim puts an issue before an authority, and the latter rules on the matter. The authorities who can do so can be individuals as well as institutions. Dar al-Ulema at Deoband, for instance, has a special department for this very purpose. They have already come out with a 12-volume collection of fatwa. But that is not the end.
Fatwas are eternal.
They accumulate and go on from man to man and from time to time. Whenever a Muslim is in doubt at some point of conduct or when he is involved in a dispute with another person for any problem of life, he will turn to some authority to find what the authority has decreed in its fatwa on the matter. Issuing fatwas, therefore, is an art to solve all human problems. They are luminaries gifted with an encyclopaedic vision plus celestial omniscience so as to pronounce verdict on infinite problems ranging from personal hygiene to marital relations, from sex with goat and mare to rape and adultery, from finer points to law on inheritance to all those confusions about the cosmic order, i.e., the interplenatary relations of the earth, the sun, the moon and the like. So far, so good.