Like so many recent incidents, the death of Eric Garner contained personal and historic precedents that made the players appear like puppets in a story that has been told and retold with only details to distinguish between them.
Four activists will be allowed to grow their own marijuana, for personal consumption, setting a precedent that invites further legal challenge to the entirety of Mexico's laws on marijuana.
Such arguments have led some to conclude that we will soon see many more of these autonomous lorries on the motorway – potentially setting a precedent for personal cars of the future.
The decision, a break from precedent, drew strong personal protest from President Obama.
Beyond that precedent, Mrs. Heinz Kerry's personal fortune has already come into political play.
If the case gets that far, it might set a precedent that makes personal data more secure.Update: There is at least one legal precedent, but it is not very encouraging either.
We have precedents for heinous personal beliefs coinciding with creative brilliance (Ezra Pound, Richard Wagner), and bigotry embodied in works of great formal achievement ("The Birth of a Nation," "Triumph of the Will"), but this is an unusual case of an artist's ideological extremism so suddenly exposed, and so plainly relevant to his art.
It also potentially can limit corporate exposure to any messages an employee sends on personal time, even though no legal precedent exists for this kind of dual-mode operation.
The Roman senate's authority derived from precedent, custom, and the personal moral example of the senators.
It would be a dangerous and slippery slope to set a precedent that allows bosses' personal beliefs to impact the health care provided to their employees.
