Often when we obey a speed limit we are driving at a speed that is not the same as what we think is the best speed given the traffic, the driving conditions, and our own driving skills. Consequently, to obey a speed limit is to do something we do not think best. Similarly, making a decision just because the same decision has been made before-following precedent-gets interesting primarily when we would otherwise have made a different decision. The parent who gives the younger child the same privileges at the same age as an older child feels the pull of precedent only when he or she otherwise thinks there is a good reason for treating the two differently, and so being constrained by precedent is again a path away from what had otherwise seemed to be the right decision. And we say we are obeying or following an authority only if what we are doing because of what the authority has said is not the same as what we would have done if left to our own devices to make the decision we thought best. The soldier who follows an order might well do something else if allowed to make his or her own unguided (or uncommanded) decision, just as the obedient student or child is one who suppresses his or her own desires to do something else.

Unknown, Frederick Schauer - Thinkin…, loc. 15