of judicial decisions to apply or not to apply the concepts in particular cases. The deciding judge exercises authority both over the content of the legal concepts being applied, and, thereby, over future judges. For in selecting the prior cases he treats as precedential and the features of the facts he takes as salient in making the decision and providing a rationale for it, the judge both further determines the content of the concept and provides potential precedents and rationales to which future judges are responsible. But that description shows that there is also a sense in which any deciding judge is the content of the concept whose applicability is being assessed, by being responsible to responsible to the authority exercised by the commitments of the prior judges whose decisions are available to provide precedents and rationales. For the justification of a decision can judge’s appeal only to the authority of prior decisions, and to the conceptual content those decisions have conferred on or discovered in the legal term in question. Here the current judge is responsible to the (semantic responsibility) expressed by the legal term, being conceptual content by responsible to the of previous judges (responsibility to, acknowledgement of the commitments authority of the of in accepting the (the responsibility to attitudes others), task-responsibility do something) to synthesize a rational (including consequences and excluding incompatibles) unity integrating the commitments of judges. the authority contemporary by past Stare decisis, of precedent, is a matter of how the relations of material consequence and incompatibility that have actually been endorsed (normative attitudes) determine what one is actually responsible for (normative statuses).
of judicial decisions to apply or not to apply the concepts in particular cases. The deciding judge exercises authority both over the content of the legal concepts being applied, and, thereby, over future judges. For in selecting the prior cases he treats as precedential and the features of the facts he takes as salient in making the decision and providing a rationale for it, the judge both further determines the content of the concept and provides potential precedents and rationales to which future judges are responsible. But that description shows that there is also a sense in which any deciding judge is responsible to the content of the concept whose applicability is being assessed, by being responsible to the authority exercised by the commitments of the prior judges whose decisions are available to provide precedents and rationales. For the justification of a judge’s decision can appeal only to the authority of prior decisions, and to the conceptual content those decisions have conferred on or discovered in the legal term in question. Here the current judge is responsible to the conceptual content (semantic responsibility) expressed by the legal term, by being responsible to the commitments of previous judges (responsibility to, acknowledgement of the authority of the attitudes of others), in accepting the task-responsibility (the responsibility to do something) to synthesize a rational (including consequences and excluding incompatibles) contemporary unity by integrating the commitments of past judges. Stare decisis, the authority of precedent, is a matter of how the relations of material consequence and incompatibility that have actually been endorsed (normative attitudes) determine what one is actually responsible for (normative statuses).