The truly conservative parts of constitutional conservatism are its implicitly within-the-system incrementalism and the impulse to lend legitimacy to fashionable ideological inclinations by citing the precedent of time-honoured forebears.
The precedent of a second time may be difficult, if not impossible, to overcome.
As James Madison recognized, obligations arising out of religious commitment are "precedent, both in order of time and degree of obligation, to the claims of Civil Society.
A British bill of rights must be seen as a serious constitutional document that will stand for a considerable period of time (the precedent is three centuries plus) and not as a short-term party political project.
And since last summer, when Mr. Bloomberg was on the verge of winning a third term, he has announced the departure of 16 high-level aides, many of them agency commissioners, a rate of turnover without precedent during his time in office.
It is a level of turnover without precedent during his time in office.
And now that they've set this precedent, it's only a matter of time before Capitalized Names everywhere start demanding that Amazon extends that most-favored-literary-nation status to them, too.
The way the painting shows the progress of time is also without precedent in Western art.
It is curious, then, that two centuries after Goya's renderings established the now time-honored precedent of presenting the world a testament of torture and terror unflinching in its graphic directness, that the scenes of torture in Zero Dark Thirty would be misjudged as endorsements and apologies for torture.
"This trial sets a dangerous precedent at a time when Egypt is trying to transition away from the abuses of the Mubarak era".
The recent growth in clinical studies by many groups within a short period of time has meant that there were no clear precedents set for trial designs.
