0 sth from the past used later as an example or rule -- presedens [ masculine ]
1 a past action, especially a legal decision, which may act as a guide or rule in the future -- presedens
a legal precedent.
He examined precedents before he proposed his own inventions.
Early decisions regarding the first genetic tests to be covered could set precedents to guide decisions about later tests.
Feasibility and desirability can be framed, when appropriate, in terms of institutional constraints and policy precedents.
How to analyse these transformations is an important question, and yet there are precedents that need to be recovered before reinventing the wheel.
Let's not assume there are no precedents for doing so.
Once we recognize this fact, we can see that hypothetical cases are really just special types of precedents.
The internationalization of a language is an uncommon phenomenon; we don't have precedents close enough to provide much of a guide.
Within the distance language learning literature there are important precedents and underpinnings for this area of enquiry.
