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precedent
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
precedent
noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
set a precedent (=do something that later actions or decisions may be based on)
▪ This legislation would set a most dangerous precedent.
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADJECTIVE
dangerous
▪ In the current climate the referendum has created a dangerous precedent.
▪ For the Soviet Union, the return to any nation of territory occupied during the war would create a dangerous precedent.
historical
▪ There were historical precedents for this kind of female protest.
▪ This is a legitimate objective founded on strong historical precedents: an unhappy monarch is a dangerous monarch.
▪ This requires imagination, inventiveness and aesthetic sensitivity informed by historical precedent.
▪ In attempting this I have high hopes because there are strong historical precedents for such speculations.
▪ There are plenty of historical precedents for this, as I pointed out in Chapter 2.
important
▪ We feel that the experience of technology agreements offers important precedents and lessons in this respect.
▪ The decision sets an important precedent.
▪ If upheld in appellate court the case could form an important precedent in family law.
legal
▪ No doubt many fewer laymen are aware of the parallel legal practice of precedent.
▪ The court ignored mountains of its own legal precedent.
▪ Thirdly, there was now a legal precedent upon which to mount attacks on politically inspired censorship.
▪ Hastings said he would approve the trip unless the defense attorneys could cite legal precedents supporting their argument.
▪ It was a legal precedent, if not a very reassuring one.
▪ I can cite several legal precedents.
■ NOUN
condition
▪ Thus, I conclude that the requirement to serve a demand is a procedural condition precedent to bringing proceedings.
■ VERB
break
▪ So, Major may be going for broke by breaking with precedent.
▪ It also broke precedent by not publishing the name or location of the company that will manufacture the drug.
create
▪ In the current climate the referendum has created a dangerous precedent.
▪ That has created a precedent which, it is argued, could also apply to the presidential term.
▪ For the Soviet Union, the return to any nation of territory occupied during the war would create a dangerous precedent.
▪ The application does not fall within the Structure Plan for the area and to allow it would create a precedent.
▪ It also created a possible precedent for Soviet conduct in other Third World regions.
establish
▪ The risks of establishing an expensive precedent were considered too great to countenance.
▪ He established a precedent that the president can act far more extensively than the constitution allows.
▪ They wanted state authorities to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act to avoid establishing new precedents for national intervention in state affairs.
▪ Davis' original move to Los Angeles established the judicial precedent that a team can move without approval from other owners.
▪ But the practical effect was to establish the precedent that the future of Northern Ireland was negotiable.
follow
▪ Elizabeth followed precedents set by her ancestors in selling Crown rights in some forests for ready money.
▪ Here he was following a precedent created by Lanfranc, who had already consecrated bishops of Dublin in 1074 and 1085.
▪ The Soviet Union could soon choose to follow these precedents.
▪ There is direct precedent in the first case, and he knows that sound strategy might require him to follow that precedent.
set
▪ But it is Michael Jackson's deal which may set precedents the music business will later regret.
▪ The unusual video arrangement will not set a presidential precedent.
▪ Guidelines have been laid, standards are set, and precedents have been established.
▪ School officials say releasing those kinds of notes would set a bad precedent and inhibit communication among teachers and administrators.
▪ The decision sets an important precedent.
▪ Once again Edward had set precedents and opened opportunities for extensive royal exploitation subsequently.
▪ Employment lawyer Robert Rosati says courts are setting a troublesome precedent when they let such suits to go forward.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ The public will not be outraged if it is told that precedents will be confined to their facts.
▪ The unusual video arrangement will not set a presidential precedent.
▪ There are precedents on both sides of the argument.
▪ There were, of course, literary precedents for this.
▪ Therefore, this could hardly be regarded as a binding precedent.
▪ We accept our responsibility not to retreat from interpreting the full meaning of the covenant in light of all of our precedents.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Precedent

Precedent \Pre*ced"ent\, a. [L. praecedens, -entis, p. pr. of praecedere: cf. F. pr['e]c['e]dent. See Precede.] Going before; anterior; preceding; antecedent; as, precedent services.
--Shak. ``A precedent injury.''
--Bacon.

Condition precedent (Law), a condition which precede the vesting of an estate, or the accruing of a right.

Precedent

Precedent \Prec"e*dent\, n.

  1. Something done or said that may serve as an example to authorize a subsequent act of the same kind; an authoritative example.

    Examples for cases can but direct as precedents only.
    --Hooker.

  2. A preceding circumstance or condition; an antecedent; hence, a prognostic; a token; a sign. [Obs.]

  3. A rough draught of a writing which precedes a finished copy. [Obs.]
    --Shak.

  4. (Law) A judicial decision which serves as a rule for future determinations in similar or analogous cases; an authority to be followed in courts of justice; forms of proceeding to be followed in similar cases.
    --Wharton.

    Syn: Example; antecedent.

    Usage: Precedent, Example. An example in a similar case which may serve as a rule or guide, but has no authority out of itself. A precedent is something which comes down to us from the past with the sanction of usage and of common consent. We quote examples in literature, and precedents in law.

Related phrases:
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
precedent

early 15c., "case which may be taken as a rule in similar cases," from Middle French precedent, noun use of an adjective, from Latin praecedentum (nominative praecedens), present participle of praecedere "go before" (see precede). Meaning "thing or person that goes before another" is attested from mid-15c. As an adjective in English from c.1400. As a verb meaning "to furnish with a precedent" from 1610s, now only in past participle precedented.

Wiktionary
precedent

  1. 1 Happening or taking place earlier in time; previous or preceding. (from 14th c.) 2 (context now rare English) Coming before in a particular order or arrangement; preceding, foregoing. (from 15th c.) n. 1 An act in the past which may be used as an example to help decide the outcome of similar instances in the future. 2 (context legal English) A decided case which is cited or used as an example to justify a judgment in a subsequent case. 3 (context obsolete with definite article English) The aforementioned (thing). 4 The previous version. 5 (context obsolete English) A rough draught of a writing which precedes a finished copy. v

  2. 1 (context transitive legal English) To provide precedents for. 2 (context transitive legal English) To be a precedent for.

Related phrases:
WordNet
precedent

  1. n. an example that is used to justify similar occurrences at a later time [syn: case in point]

  2. (civil law) a law established by following earlier judicial decisions [syn: case law, common law]

  3. a system of jurisprudence based on judicial precedents rather than statutory laws; "common law originated in the unwritten laws of England and was later applied in the United States" [syn: common law, case law]

  4. a subject mentioned earlier (preceding in time)

precedent

adj. preceding in time, order, or significance

Wikipedia
Precedent

In common law legal systems, a precedent, or authority, is a principle or rule established in a previous legal case that is either binding on or persuasive for a court or other tribunal when deciding subsequent cases with similar issues or facts. Common law legal systems place great value on deciding cases according to consistent principled rules so that similar facts will yield similar and predictable outcomes, and observance of precedent is the mechanism by which that goal is attained. The principle by which judges are bound to precedents is known as stare decisis. Black's Law Dictionary defines "precedent" as a "rule of law established for the first time by a court for a particular type of case and thereafter referred to in deciding similar cases." Common law precedent is a third kind of law, on equal footing with statutory law (statutes and codes enacted by legislative bodies), and Delegated legislation (in U.K. parlance) or regulatory law (in U.S. parlance) (regulations promulgated by executive branch agencies).

Case law, in common law jurisdictions, is the set of decisions of adjudicatory tribunals or other rulings that can be cited as precedent. In most countries, including most European countries, the term is applied to any set of rulings on law which is guided by previous rulings, for example, previous decisions of a government agency.

Essential to the development of case-law is the publication of notable judgments in the form of law reports for use by lawyers, courts and the general public, including those judgments which, when delivered or later, are accepted as being "leading cases" or "landmark decisions". In common law jurisdictions, where law students study case law to understand the application of law to facts, as well as to learn judicial interpretations of statutes, unreported rulings in trials and hearings are not treated as "case law" or "precedents" which serve as authority for deciding later cases.

Related phrases:

Usage examples of "precedent".

Here likewise they found traces of another ambuscade, but the place totally as unprovided as the two precedent were.

Brand, for appointing a committee to inquire into precedents, was rejected by a large majority.

There was precedent for what was happening to us, too, for I recalled that on the only occasion that Lemuel Gulliver permits himself to go skinny-dipping in the land of the Houyhnhnms, a female Yahoo throws herself lustfully into the water after him.

Fiona Menton, in the meantime, could keep checking for medical precedents.

May it know how the mind in expansion revolts From a nursery Past with dead letters aloof, And the piping to stupor of Precedents shun, In a field where the forefather print of the hoof Is not yet overgrassed by the watering hours, And should prompt us to Change, as to promise of sun, Till brain-rule splendidly towers.

Marriage, the precedent condition of most parenthood, is thus regarded as the concern of the individuals and the present.

Father had worked on Lincoln in private, using the Jackson precedents, and Monty had himself worked on Lincoln in Cabinet, stressing his duty never to give up federal authority anywhere, an idea to which the new Chief Executive, happily for the Union, seemed almost mystically attached.

It is a precedent that has earned Rome no friends and a plentitude of enemies.

The Jackson case was also a very politicized trial, both sides deliberately angling for a long-term legal precedent that would stake-out big claims for their interests in cyberspace.

It will be hours of argument with that rule-bound precisian Androctus, hours of searching for precedent in the Solamnic Measure of Knighthood.

There was ample precedent for the wisdom of leaving a preliterate culture in strict isolation, so the expedition withdrew.

The bill was further opposed by the Earl of Carnarvon, who protested against the divorce of religion from education, and expressed his fears that such a precedent might be applied to Oxford and Cambridge.

Avarice presently treated this with ridicule, called it a distinction without a difference, and absolutely insisted that when once all pretensions of honour and virtue were given up in any one instance, that there was no precedent for resorting to them upon a second occasion.

While the routineers see machinery and precedents revolving with mankind as puppets, he puts the deliberate, conscious, willing individual at the center of his philosophy.

Reiverslaw, always a scorner of precedents, kept his sheep on the hills, where the pasture was as rich as in summer-time.