Jurisprudence constante, French for stable or constant jurisprudence, is a legal doctrine under which a long series of previous decisions applying a particular legal principle or rule is highly persuasive but not controlling in later cases dealing with similar or identical issues of law. The doctrine is recognized in most civil law jurisdictions and in certain mixed jurisdictions such as Louisiana. It compares directly with stare decisis, but the Louisiana Supreme Court notes a principal difference: a single court decision can provide a sufficient foundation for stare decisis, whereas a series of adjudicated cases all in accord forms the basis for jurisprudence constante. The Louisiana Court of Appeal has noted that in Louisiana it is only a secondary source of law, which cannot be authoritative, because legislation is the source of law and the civilian tradition does not recognize stare decisis.
Facts
Classification
Doctrine Category Connections
In Area Of Law
Entity-backed identity for the doctrine category value this doctrine already carries as an enum fact, resolved to a doctrine entity by an explicit value-to-entity map (phase 3 bucket conversion, docs\design_entity_backed_browse_buckets_20260928.md). The enum fact itself stays on the entity unchanged.
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Jurisprudence constante
a long series of previous decisions applying a particular legal principle is highly persuasive but not controlling in subsequent casesView the Source Jurisprudence constante (Wikipedia)
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