I wrote this book while serving as the deputy head of the law school and the director for all the undergraduate law admissions programmes at the University of Manchester. In both roles I, like many of those around me, would often try to invest an argument with more authority by saying – if not always quite showing – that it was backed by a precedent. While sitting in committee rooms and carrying out administrative chores I found myself increasingly trying to make sense of such behaviour. Sometimes, pointing to a precedent was clearly a way of trying to be fair. But at other times I was sure it was the coward's way out or an excuse for inertia. The study which follows is mainly about judicial precedent. But there are plenty of instances where, in trying to illuminate a problem, I draw upon more general instances of decision-making by precedent, many of which, I confess, came to mind in administrative contexts when I am sure I should have been concentrating on other matters.

In so far as this book is concerned specifically with judicial precedents, it is not supposed to present the law relating to precedent in any particular jurisdiction. Rather, it is an exercise in understanding precedent as a jurisprudential concept. In undertaking this exercise I have relied mainly on English law illustrations and problems, though quite often I have used examples from other systems, particularly American law, when those examples point to difficulties and insights which are not immediately apparent from the English sources.