Abstract

CHACIN FUENMAYOR, Ronald. Regarding the Origin of Law: the New Role of Precedent . Frónesis [online]. 2010, vol.17, n.1, pp.85-107. ISSN 1315-6268.

This work presents a study of the sources of law, centered on jurisprudence or precedent, analyzing the importance this has today even in our countries with a written legal system, in order to achieve an objective: to demonstrate the relevance of this source of law due to new jurisprudential phenomena. Three aspects will be developed: notions about the sources of law, the fundamental characters of precedence or jurisprudence, the importance of constitutional precedent as a source of law and the outstanding role of this source of law in our days. Conclusions are that the current verification for the importance of precedent as a source of law with traits similar to the law, generates legitimacy problems for court actions, especially constitutional courts, when they pronounce intermediate verdicts or when they perceive a constitutional amendment in their actions.

Keywords : Sources of law; precedence-jurisprudence; intermediate verdicts; jurisdictional amendment.