  One obvious possibility for avoiding this problem would be to ask how the precedent court would have assessed the facts in later case. But although this would be satisfactory in theory (if sometimes difficult in practice), it again does not reflect legal practice. Courts sometimes approach the question in this way, but often they do not, and there is no legal requirement that they do so. A better response is this: the basic common law requirement in stare decisis is to treat earlier cases as correctly decided. A case may be distinguished, but only if that distinction does not imply that the precedent was wrongly decided. So in the later case the court must decide whether the factual difference (real versus personal property, implied versus express trust) provides a better justification against the earlier decision than the facts of that case on their own. If it does, then the court may distinguish (citing that differences with the original case), since that does not imply that precedent was mistaken. If not—because real property or implied trusts raise no special considerations in this context—then the precedent must be followed. This approach, of course, assumes that it is possible to make these sorts of comparative judgements (for arguments that this is not generally possible see Alexander 1989, 34–7).