In the general scientific and universal sense, a precedent is something that precedes the event under analysis, which served as the basis for his assessments. This term is used in many fields of knowledge and everyday life of a person, however, most often, when it is used, a legal precedent is recalled.
The term precedent itself (the meaning of the word translated from Latin - "previous") in the legal sense appeared in ancient Rome. However, only in the 18th-19th centuries, during the Enlightenment and the industrial revolution, it began to be widely used in legal practice.
The modern legal dictionary gives the following interpretation: a precedent is a previously adopted court decision on a particular case, which becomes the basis for the resolution of other similar cases.
From this definition, we can conclude that a precedent is, first of all, a law-making act, the main subject of which is a judge. At the same time, the scope of judicial law-making is much narrower than parliamentary law-making. So, for a judge, a precedent is not the main, but a by-product of his activity, which is developed exclusively within the framework of the legal field that already exists in a particular country.
The need for a legal precedent is explained by the fact that legal norms are quite general in nature, and so-called “gaps in the legislation” inevitably arise. It is these that should be supplemented by acts of judicial law-making, which eventually take their place in the legal system of the country.
When analyzing the main sources of law , a clear distinction should be made between the concepts of "legal precedent" and "legal practice." A precedent is, first of all, a concrete decision, while legal practice is a whole series of the same type of court decisions that are adopted in the framework of a lengthy judicial process.
At the same time, it should be emphasized that far from all countries, legal precedent is a source of law in the full sense of the word. It is natural that it plays a significant role in the states of the Anglo-Saxon legal institute (Great Britain, South Africa, USA, Canada, India), the legal systems of which were largely created on the basis of case law. In addition, there are states in which the precedent value increases with time: France, Liechtenstein, Germany, Spain, Latin America. In Russia, this source of law is not officially recognized, although certain shifts in recent years have been found here.
A classic example of a state with developed case law is the United Kingdom. However, even here the circle of courts that can make decisions, which are subsequently binding on everyone, is very seriously limited. These include only the High Court, the High Court of Justice and the House of Lords. In addition, the courts do not subsequently use the whole decision, but only their special element - the so-called “essence of the decision”, which is a provision of the law applicable to those issues that arose again in connection with the facts established by the court.