Precedent

Precedent is and remains central to common law, but is neither fixed in stone, a mechanical rule to follow, nor fundamentally “binding.” In interesting yet often neglected ways, precedents maynot only be expressly but implicitly overruled, abandoned or circumvented (without saying so), so as to render them no longer “good law”, or undercut by simply whittling them down to size, only then to subsequently reaffirm them.