Precedents as Rules and Practice: New Approaches and Methodologies in Studies of Legal Precedents

This book brings together contributions with different approaches to the study of precedent as both ‘rules’ and ‘practice’. The questions asked are thus not limited to whether precedent is defined by its constraining effect, but furthermore the contributions often concern the functions and roles of precedent through research questions such as: What is precedent when studying the practice of judicial decision making? How are precedents formed by adjudication and conversely, what role do precedent citations play for shaping judicial decisions and the outcomes? To what extent are precedents used in different systems of law and in different court’s jurisprudence? When and for what are precedents used? And what different effects do different styles of precedent have and why?