3 Role of Precedents

1. The constitutional command:Article 128(3) — the SC's interpretations and legalprinciples "must be followed by all" (the binding precedent rule constitutionalized);2. The system's operation: the hierarchy of authority (the larger-bench discipline: the division → full bench → larger-full-bench; the Constitutional Bench's primacy in its field); the ratio-and- obiter's distinction (Procedural Law-I's Unit 2 anatomy); the NKP-and-Bulletin's publication system (the precedent's accessibility — the Nepal Kanoon Patrika's institutional role);3. The precedent's functions in Nepal: the law's certainty-and-equality; the development engine (the PIL-and-rights expansion: the case-law as the system's living growth — the courts' "judge-made constitutionalism" era); the gap-filling (the codes' silences bridged by the accumulated case-law);4. The civil-law contrast's absence: Nepal's formalized stare decisis as the mixed system's signature (the civil-law codification + the common-law precedent — Unit 1's families in one system).