Listening to senators and an appellate judge extol the virtue of adhering to precedent, one would reasonably conclude that most fact patterns are identical, and finding applicable precedent a simple matter of reading the law.
In three days of questioning over Ricci, Sotomayor has managed to make an incendiary case sound like a mere civil-service dispute whose disposition was commanded not by notions of a more perfect civil society, but strictly by the applicable precedent — which, to a large extent, it was.
While Rodriguez names as defendants MLB, MLBPA and the Office of the Commissioner of Baseball, a review and understanding of applicable precedent demonstrates that the party against whom he has the strongest claim is MLBPA.
That said, the Sterling case has not left the N.B.A. with some rigid and universally applicable precedent.
William Dexter, general counsel for the tourism cabinet, said the most applicable precedent was American Atheists Inc. v. the City of Detroit Downtown Development Authority.
This effort began with bogus conflict allegations based on the fact that Mr. Mueller and Mr. Comey were acquainted, and on the private political contributions of Mr. Mueller's team members — all complete baloney under applicable precedent.
Re "The Perjury Precedent" (Op-Ed, Dec. 28): The legally applicable precedent for conviction for perjury in the District of Columbia, where the President testified, is not the DeZarn case, which was decided by the Sixth Circuit, but a 1995 opinion by the District of Columbia Circuit in the case of Deborah Gore Dean, a prosecution brought by an independent counsel.
Sotomayor defended her position in Ricci as following applicable precedent.
While the constitution prescribes that Congress shall step in to resolve such a tie, and while a couple of early 19th-century elections were close enough for Congress to get involved, there really are no applicable precedents.
"Simply put, under applicable Supreme Court precedent, the Government cannot turn the NCAA rulebook into an appendix of Title 18 of the United States Code," the motion added, referring to the main criminal code.
This would respond to the banks' arguments in Clear Channel that the debt commitment letter was unenforceable because all of its material terms were not agreed to and the dispute over applicable governing precedent for the terms of the debt facility between the private equity firms and the banks.
