Philosophical Foundations of Precedent offers a broad, deep, and diverse range of philosophical investigations of the role of precedent in law, adjudication, and morality. The forty chapters present the work of a large and inclusive group of authors which comprises of well-established leaders in the discipline and new voices in legal philosophy.
The magnitude of the resulting project is extraordinary, presenting a diverse array of innovative and creative philosophical investigations of the practice of adhering to past decisions, in law and allied fields of practical reasoning. And by the same token, the contributions elucidate the reasons that courts and other decision-makers may have for departing from what has been done before. The phenomena under investigation include the law and practice of common law and civil jurisdictions around the world.
In addition to its fundamental relevance to common law jurisdictions, this work will be of broad and significant interest to theoretically minded audiences in continental Europe, Latin America, and Asia because it involves an extensive study of practices of precedent in civil law systems as well as common law systems.
Timothy Endicott, Hafsteinn Dan Kristjánsson, and Sebastian Lewis: Introduction: The Central Question and Its Ramifications I. The Nature of Precedent 1: Larry Alexander: Precedent: The What, the Why, and the How 2: Grant Lamond: The Doctrine of Precedent and the Rule of Recognition 3: Sebastian Lewis: On the Nature of Stare Decisis 4: N. W. Barber: Why Precedent Works 5: Adam Rigoni: Precedent and Legal Creep: A Cause for Concern? 6: Hafsteinn Dan Kristjánsson: Elements of Precedent 7: Leah Trueblood and Peter Hatfield: Precedent and Paradigm: Thomas Kuhn on Science and the Common Law 8: Barbara Baum Levenbook: Supplanting Defeasible Rules 9: Brian Leiter: Realism About Precedent II. Precedent and Legal Argument 10: Claudio Michelon: The Uses of Precedent and Legal Argument 11: Luís Duarte d'Almeida: The 'Expiscation' of Legal Principles 12: Ralf Poscher: The Hermeneutics of Legal Precedent 13: Emily Sherwin: Do Precedents Constrain Reasoning? 14: Amalia Amaya: Precedent, Exemplarity, and Imitation 15: John Horty: How Does Precedent Constrain? 16: Scott Brewer: Precedent, Contest, and Law: A Logocratic Agony That Fits 17: Bruno Celano: Dog Law: On the Logical Structure (or lack thereof) of Distinguishing 18: Cass R. Sunstein: Analogical Reasoning and Precedent 19: Frederick Schauer and Barbara A. Spellman: Precedent and Similarity III. Precedent and Legal Theory 20: Andrei Marmor: Presumptive Reasons & Stare Decisis 21: Kenneth M. Ehrenberg: An Artefactual Theory of Precedent 22: Nina Varsava: The Gravitational Force of Future Decisions 23: John C.P. Goldberg and Benjamin C. Zipursky: A Precedent-Based Critique of Legal Positivism 24: Fábio Perin Shecaira: Precedent and the Source-Norm Distinction 25: Stephen Perry: Precedent as Generalized Second-Order Reasons 26: Torben Spaak: Reasons Holism and the Shared View of Precedent IV. Precedent and Judicial Power 27: Dale Smith: Should Courts Follow Mistaken Statutory Precedents? 28: Mikolaj Barczentewicz: Precedent and Law-Making Powers 29: Maris Köpcke: Shaping our Relationship: The Power to Set a Precedent 30: Richard H. Fallon, Jr.: Constitutionally Erroneous Precedent as a Window on Judicial Lawmaking in the U.S. Legal System 31: Lorena Ramírez-Ludeña: Statutory Interpretation and Binding Precedents in the Civil Law Tradition 32: Nils Jansen: The Oracles of Codification: Informal Authority in Statutory Interpretation 33: Hillary Nye: Predictability and Precedent V. Effects of Precedent in Morality and Law 34: Katharina Stevens: Precedent Slippery Slopes 35: Jeremy Waldron: 'A Previous Instance': Yamamoto and the Uses of Precedent 36: Adam Perry: Consistency in Administrative Law 37: Nicole Roughan: Escaping Precedent: Interlegality and Change in Rules of Recognition 38: Matthew H. Kramer: Hoary Precedents 39: Heidi M. Hurd: Partnering with the Dead to Govern the Unborn: The Value of Precedent in Judicial Reasoning 40: Emily Kidd White: Emotions and Precedent
Timothy Endicott is the Vinerian Professor of English Law at the University of Oxford. He writes on Constitutional and Administrative Law and Jurisprudence, with special interests in law and language and legal interpretation. He was a Fellow in Law at Balliol College from 1999 to 2020 and served as the Dean of the Faculty of Law in Oxford for two terms, from 2007 to 2015. He is the author of Administrative Law, 4th edition (OUP 2018) and Vagueness in Law (OUP 2000). Hafsteinn Dan Kristjánsson is an adjunct at the University of Iceland and a lecturer at Balliol College, Oxford. Before that, he was the deputy to the Parliamentary Ombudsman in Iceland. He has written two books, twenty peer-reviewed articles and book chapters, and 13 other articles or book chapters on law chiefly in the fields of administrative and constitutional law, legal method, jurisprudence, civil and criminal procedure as well as criminal law. Sebastian Lewis is Lecturer in Law, Oriel College, Oxford, and Global Associate Professor of Law, University of Notre Dame in England and Incoming Fellow in Law, University of Surrey. He is interested in jurisprudence, legal reasoning, public law, and comparative public law. He has taught constitutional law and jurisprudence for various colleges at Oxford and King's College London. He holds a Master of Laws from Harvard Law School and is a qualified lawyer in Chile.
