The force of precedent in legal, moral, and empirical reasoning

Abstract

Comparing the force of precedent in legal, moral, and empirical reasoning sheds light on the nature and goals of those reasoning processes and on the truths at which they aim. Given the breadth of this topic, my goal here cannot be completeness. I aim rather to point out some interesting and suggestive contrasts. My general thesis is that precedent exerts less force in empirical than in moral reasoning, and less in moral than in legal judgment. In law the "gravitational force'' of prior rulings represents a genuine and justified institutional demand; in moral reasoning previous judgments generate global, but not analogous local, constraints and the scope is more limited to the domain of one's own previous judgments; while in science and more mundane empirical reasoning, conservatism toward earlier theories and beliefs is at most an easily overridden strategic presumption. After defending these claims, I shall suggest that both ideological and semantic factors underlie their truth.