She cannae take any more, Jim ...sheeze breakink up! Choate constitutional tribbles in here...<trekkie tribble noises>. "Laddy, don't you think you should... rephrase that?" - Scotty, The Trouble with Tribbles.
From Choate's 1L sig, the Fount of Fugue:
If the law is based on precedence, why is the Constitution not the final precedence since it's the primary authority?
You gnaw at a branch and call it a root. You have common law (the law of common men, lex communis), and legislative law (bringing the law of the sovereign). Common law precedent is an aggregate body of knowledge consisting not only decisions, but of logical constructs -- a way of approaching and framing legal thought. Common law has never been codified in a document, it's a body of relational knowledge. The Constitution is not the primary authority, because constitutions (legislative law) are not the root of what you see as law. Indeed, the US Const. finds root in common law and common right. Lex est ab eterno. Athenian Constitution -- Aristotle, 350 B.C.E. http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/athenian_const.html "...and it is to this last, they say, that the masses have owed their strength most of all, since, when the democracy is master of the voting-power, it is master of the constitution. Moreover, since the laws were not drawn up in simple and explicit terms .... disputes inevitably occurred, and the courts had to decide in every matter, whether public or private .... The Thesmothetae were many years afterwards, when these offices had already become annual, with the object that they might publicly record all legal decisions, and act as guardians of them with a view to determining the issues between litigants." ~Aimee