PRECEDENT (from Lat. prwcidens. pres. part. of pra-cedere, to go before). In a general sense, any act or determination which is taken as a guide to action under similar circumstances thereafter, as personal habits are precedents automatically followed, and social and legal cus toms are precedents which have, by long observ ance, acquired the sanction of moral or civil law.
In its technical legal sense the term precedent has conic to be employed to designate (a) the settled practice of the bar and (b) the judicial determination of questions of law by the courts. The popular expression 'forms and precedents' points to the former use of the word. as in the forms of pleading and the forms employed in conveyancing, which have acquired commanding authority in the legal profession, and are implic itly followed by successive generations of lawyers, until changed by statutory authority, only be cause of a long continued exact observance.
Of a different character is the judicial prece dent. This has intrinsic authority and exerts a more or less binding force from the hour of its promulgation. It is not, as is generally be lieved, peculiar to the common-law system of England and the United States, but is essential to the administration of every legal system.
Indeed, it is involved in the very conception of law as a rule of conduct that the same acts shall produce the same legal consequences, that the same combination of circumstances, however often it may arise, shall invariably be dealt with in the same way.
In this respect, however, the difference between our system and that which obtains under the civil-law' system is that we have given a narrower range and at the same time a more conclusive authority to precedent. The common law denies the effect of precedent to legal writ ings, with the exception of a few texts of great antiquity (as Littleton and Coke), as well as to the unofficial expressions of legal opinion by emi nent lawyers and judges, restricting it to judicial opinions officially delivered; while, on the other hand, it regards such decisions as of binding force, and not, as under the civil law, of merely persuasive authority. See DICTU3I Law ; CIVIL LAW; CONSTITUTIONAL Law; etc. Consult: Wambaugh, The Study of Cases (Boston, 189I); Blackstone, Commentaries.