How can a court set a precedent and why is it important?
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There are a lot of things in law that aren’t dealt with in the written law.
Real life has too many technicalities, special cases, and other things that weren’t specifically mentioned in the exact wording of the law. So courts have the ability to interpret the meaning of a law to a certain degree.
A precedent means that the Court decided to do things a certain way, and when that thing comes up again other courts will look to that and do it that way to maintain consistency.
For example let’s say there’s a law that says you cannot ride your bike on major roads without a helmet. If the law doesn’t define what “major” roads are, a judge must decide.
The first judge makes a ruling that in context of this law a major road is anything with 2-lanes or more.
Next time this comes up, other judges try to use the same definition.
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