  This problem is easier to understand if a number of distinct aspects of legal cases are taken into account. Most cases do not create precedents: they turn on a dispute about the facts—who did what, when, and to whom. In these cases the job of the court is to decide on the evidence before it whose version of the facts to endorse. The parties in such cases agree about the law that applies to their dispute, they simply disagree about what actually happened. In other cases there can be a dispute over the applicable law—one side claiming that on the facts the appropriate law supports a decision in their favour and the other side disputing this account of the law and arguing that on those facts the law supports a decision in favour of them. (It goes without saying that there are also cases with disputes over both the facts and the law.) Precedents are those cases which require the courts to resolve a dispute over the law.