Court Precedent in the Anglo-Saxon Legal Family

Judicial precedent in the Anglo-Saxon legal family is seen as an institutional mechanism for the production and stabilization of law through judicial interpretation and application of norms. The study analyzes the elements of the stare decisis doctrine, the ratio decidendi allocation methodology, vertical and horizontal connectivity, and flexibility tools (distinguishing, overruling, per incuriam). Special attention is paid to how the highest courts (primarily the Supreme Court of Great Britain, the Supreme Court of the United States and the Supreme Court of Canada) balance legal certainty and the development of law in the face of accelerating social and technological changes, including the digitalization of law enforcement and the growing role of algorithmic tools. The article concluded that judicial precedent in the Anglo-Saxon legal family is not just a source of law, but integral institutional technology. It provides predictability through the cohesion of the courts, allows law to develop through structured mechanisms of flexibility, and maintains the legitimacy of the judiciary through consistency of argument. Digitalization of justice changes not only access to judicial practice, but also the structure of the doctrine of precedent itself. Judicial precedent sets not only the result, but also the procedural format of thinking: legal argumentation must be verifiable, comparable and reproducible. This dramatically reduces the risk of arbitrariness, because arbitrariness is not just a "bad decision," but a decision without verifiable logic in the system.