2.3.2 Precedent

• Meaning: a judicial decision that furnishes a rule for future cases. The doctrine: stare decisiset non quieta movere — to stand by decisions and not disturb settled matters.• The technical anatomy (short-question gold):ratio decidendi — the binding reasoning necessary to the decision, the legal principle on which it rests; obiter dictum — what is said "by the way," persuasive but not binding. The ratio binds; the obiter instructs.• Authoritative vs persuasive precedent — binding within its hierarchy vs influential beyond it (a foreign court's reasoning; a decision of a coordinate bench).• Common law vs civil law: the common law systems treat precedent as judge-made law (binding doctrine); civil-law systems treat jurisprudence as interpretation, not source — yet even they follow settled lines. Nepal sits between: a codified system in which Supreme Court precedents in practice bind lower courts, and the Supreme Court itself treats its en banc holdings as settled doctrine — stare decisis institutionalised more by judicial practice than by code.• Making law by deciding: precedent is where the realist school's critique bites (Unit 3.6) and where the sociological school's "law in action" is most visible.