  Arguments from precedent and analogy are characteristic of legal reasoning. Legal reasoning differs in a number of ways from the sort of reasoning employed by individuals in their everyday lives. It frequently uses arguments that individuals do not employ, or that individuals employ in different ways. Precedent is a good example of this. In individual reasoning we do not normally regard the fact that we decided one way in the past as raising some presumption that we should decide the same way in the future. Of course there can be special circumstances that have this effect—someone may have relied on what we did before, or may have had their expectations raised that we would do so again—but absent these special considerations we do not regard ourselves as being committed in the future to make the same decision. It is always open to us to reconsider a decision and change our minds if we no longer think our original judgement was correct.