IV. CONCLUSION
The idea of precedent is not restricted to the citation
of authority within a single jurisdiction or nation-state.
Systems sharing the same jurisprudential origins—e.g.,
the Napoleonic Code or the English Common law—
may invoke each other's precedents; and there is au-
thority in the United States and the Netherlands for
the courts' adopting a “harmonizing construction” of
domestic law by using comparative techniques to as-
certain the solutions to a particular social problem of
foreign legal systems of various types. Moreover, deci-
sions of international courts and tribunals have persua-
sive authority in public international law and the Stat-
ute of the International Court of Justice (article 38)
accepts national judicial decisions as a subsidiary source
of law.
In sum, legal precedent in its conservative and crea-
tive aspects is encountered in all legal systems, though
in different forms. It has been said: “Tradition and
Conscience are the two wings given to the human soul
to reach the truth” (T. M. Taylor, Speaking to Gradu-
ates, Edinburgh, 1965). Both are implicit in legal prec-
edent. The judicial function is not or should not be
that of an animated index to the law reports, nor is
justice by computer a tolerable thought, however
helpful computers may prove to be in tracking avail-
able authority. Julius Stone, who has written exten-
sively on all aspects of precedent, echoes in that con-
tent the injunction of the father of cybernetics, Nor-
bert Wiener, “Render unto man what is man's, and
unto the machine only that which is the machine's.”
