In common law legal systems, a precedent, or authority, 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. Black's Law Dictionary defines "precedent" as a "rule of law established for the first time by a court for a particular type of case and thereafter referred to in deciding similar cases."[1] Common law precedent is a third kind of law, on equal footing with statutory law (statutes and codes enacted by legislative bodies), and Delegated legislation (in U.K. parlance) or regulatory law (in U.S. parlance) (regulations promulgated by executive branch agencies).
Case law, in common law jurisdictions, is the set of decisions of adjudicatory tribunals or other rulings that can be cited as precedent. In most countries, including most European countries, the term is applied to any set of rulings on law which is guided by previous rulings, for example, previous decisions of a government agency.
Essential to the development of case-law is the publication of notable judgments in the form of law reports for use by lawyers, courts and the general public, including those judgments which, when delivered or later, are accepted as being "leading cases" or "landmark decisions". In common law jurisdictions, where law students study case law to understand the application of law to facts, as well as to learn judicial interpretations of statutes, unreported rulings in trials and hearings are not treated as "case law" or "precedents" which serve as authority for deciding later cases.[2]
