Literary notes about precedent (AI summary)
The term "precedent" has been used in literature with a surprising range of nuances, serving both as a marker of established authority and as a reference point for novel or unprecedented situations. For example, in legal and political texts, authors like Thomas Hobbes and Thomas Paine invoke precedent to justify claims about sovereignty and historical practice [1][2][3], while Hume and Locke employ it to support chains of reasoning in philosophy [4][5][6][7]. At times, precedent is portrayed as a foundation upon which further judgment may be built, such as in discussions of literary criticism or social order [8][9]. Conversely, its absence is noted to emphasize the uniqueness of an event or decision, as seen in works by Dostoyevsky and Sinclair Lewis [10][11][12]. Even in more casual or rhetorical contexts, the term serves to critique reliance on established norms or to highlight deviations from customary practices [13][14][15]. This multifaceted usage underscores how "precedent" functions as both a stabilizing historical reference and a benchmark against which change or disruption can be measured.
- The reasons whereof, are the same which are alledged in the precedent Chapter, for the same Rights, and Consequences of Soveraignty by Institution.
— from Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes - If the first king was taken by lot, it establishes a precedent for the next, which excludes hereditary succession.
— from Common Sense by Thomas Paine - To understand therefore this text, we are not to consider it solitarily, but jointly with the words precedent, and subsequent.
— from Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes - It will be easy to explain the passion of pity, from the precedent reasoning concerning sympathy.
— from A Treatise of Human Nature by David Hume - This clearly appears from the precedent explication of necessity.
— from A Treatise of Human Nature by David Hume - And this principle, as it plainly makes no addition to our precedent ideas, can only change the manner of our conceiving them.
— from A Treatise of Human Nature by David Hume - The Argument of assenting on first hearing, is upon a false supposition of no precedent teaching.
— from An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 1 by John Locke - Such reading is the condition precedent to all true judgment of a writer’s work.
— from An Essay on Man; Moral Essays and Satires by Alexander Pope - Similarly, it will tend to set a precedent for future judgments.
— from Introduction to the Science of Sociology by E. W. Burgess and Robert Ezra Park - That would be another novelty and a dangerous one; and again, there is no precedent for it.
— from Short Stories by Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Suddenly, without precedent, Babbitt was not merely bored but admitting that he was bored.
— from Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis - There was no precedent for such a thing.
— from The Country of the Blind, and Other Stories by H. G. Wells - But they are briefed by the prosaic, and are not ashamed to appeal to precedent.
— from Intentions by Oscar Wilde - Not precedent, but the verbal professions of the Allies, have rendered it indefensible.
— from The Economic Consequences of the Peace by John Maynard Keynes - the "Mary Powell," enjoy'd everything beyond precedent.
— from Complete Prose Works by Walt Whitman
