Precedent
From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In law, a precedent or authority is a legal case that established a principle or rule that a court may need to adopt when deciding subsequent cases with similar issues or facts.
The term may also refer to the collective body of case law that a court should consider when interpreting the law. When a precedent establishes an important legal principle, or represents new or changed law on a particular issue, that precedent is often known as a landmark decision.
Precedent is very important in a fair legal system because it can allow the law to be enforced equally to all cases. For example, if a person crashes a car because they are drunk, the resulting court case will set a ""precedent"" for all similar cases. If a later case has a different result, the precedent may be changed. If we did not have this system, then it is likely that the law would not be fairly enforced.
