Introduction : The Central Question and Its Ramifications

Abstract

This Introduction sets the scene for the forty chapters of Philosophical Foundations of Precedent, pointing out reasons for the range and the depth of the investigations offered in the book. The central question concerning precedent in law is: why should a judicial decision today depend on what a court decided in the past? Any answer to that question generates a tension between the putative value of following previous decisions, and the value of readiness to reform the law. This book offers a broad array of philosophical investigations into the central question and the central tension, and into the variety of ways in which the fact of an earlier decision may be treated as a reason for decision in later cases. The book addresses the nature and authority of precedent and of the forms of reasoning that it involves in common law and civil law systems, and addresses fundamental principles as to how and when to act in accordance with precedent. The Introduction explains the way in which the project of the book emerged as a collaborative, collegial enterprise among a large and inclusive group of established contributors and new voices in legal philosophy.