the words of Redlich, has a "directive force for future cases of the same or similar nature."[1] Until the sentence was pronounced, it was as yet in equilibrium. Its form and content were uncertain. Any one of many principles might lay hold of it and shape it. Once declared, it is a new stock of descent. It is charged with a vital power. It is the source from which new principles or norms may spring to shape sentences thereafter. If we seek the psychological basis of this tendency, we shall find it, I suppose, in habit.[2] Whatever its psychological basis, it is one of the living forces of our law. Not all the progeny of principles begotten of a judgement survive, however, to maturity. Those than cannot prove their worth and strength by the test of experience, are sacrificed mercilessly and thrown into the void. The common law does not work from pre-established truths of universal and inflexible validity to conclusions derived from them
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INTRODUCTION
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