Doctrine of precedent

[destain]

can someone give me a proper definition of the doctrine of precedent;l? im a bit confused as to whether it is a predecent of thw principle or whtever...

[meganrobyn]

It's really just the set of rules governing when and how court decisions take on the force of law. The ratio decidendi of a superior court of record will form binding precedent when applied to a case before a lower court in the same hierarchy, when the material facts of the two cases are similar. It operates because courts follow the principle of stare decisis, which means they stand by things previously decided.