Spirit and Letter of the Law

• The letter of the law is the specific wording of a law, such as the law preventing theft. The spirit of the law is the attempt to understand the intention of the law, such as interpreting the law to mean that the state does not want people choosing to take property from others. These two ideas can often come into conflict, such as if a lady were shopping and compulsively placed an item in her purse, accidentally, and was caught leaving the store with the item. The law preventing theft was broken; however, the spirit of the law may recognize that it was not broken intentionally and that allowing her to pay for the item would uphold the statute.
  
  

Specific Instances

• Legislators write laws with a purposefully broad scope. Each law should cover a range of interpretations. Judicial precedent allows the scope of laws to be broad. The alternative is for legislators to write each law such that it could apply to every conceivable situation. Courts evaluate laws as the state brings cases before them and determines how the law should apply to each situation. For instance, a court may believe that the female shoplifter suffers from a psychological condition that made the theft accidental, limiting her punishment to reflect the situation. Additionally, precedents may already exist for situation's like hers, providing courts with a guideline that they can follow in her case.
  
  

Deontological Approach

• Deontological ethics is the ideology that the means you employ should be your ethical focus, and that if your means are ethical, your ends will be ethical also. In law, the deontological approach suggests that each case deserves the individual focus of a judge and jury, in order to protect the basic rights of the accused. Precedent allows a judge to act deontologically, fully evaluating all factors involved in each case and making a decision based on the individual circumstances involved in the case. As a result, precedents allow the judicial system to act ethically in its own decision-making.
  
  

Proof

• The burden of proof plays its own role in the doctrine of precedent. Attorneys use precedents to substantiate their cases and suggest actions that the court should follow, such as throwing out some cases or providing a foundation for others. Each time a precedent is used, it is the responsibility of the court to determine if the precedent is valid. This requires an evaluation of the circumstances of the initial precedent against the circumstances of the case. For instance, the precedent that protects the shoplifter would have to state that in the original case, the individual was suffering from a similar condition.