  Although the idea of the ratio decidendi is a staple of legal practice, it is notable that it is a construct from a precedent rather than an explicit feature of most legal judgments. Judgments are highly discursive texts and very rarely identify their own rationes. What is more, even if a court chooses to explicitly formulate the ratio of its decision, this precise formulation is not itself regarded as binding on later courts. (See Perry 1987, 235–7; Schauer 1989, 455; Simpson 1973, 372; Moore 1987, 185–6; Stone 1985, 123–9.)