Course: Introduction / Procedural Law
In law, a precedent is a court decision in an earlier case with facts and legal issues similar to a dispute currently before a court.
Judges will generally “follow precedent” – meaning that they use the principles established in earlier cases to decide new cases that have similar facts and raise similar legal issues. A judge will disregard precedent if a party can show that the earlier case was wrongly decided, or that it differed in some significant way from the current case.
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Last Modified: 07/06/2021