WORK IN PROGRESS
Code Without Stare Decisis: Louisiana, Lithuania, and What Makes Judicial Reasoning Civilian
A comparative study of Louisiana and Lithuania focused on how courts in civil-law systems reason from prior decisions and what makes that reasoning civilian without common-law stare decisis.
CONTEXT
The project starts with a practical question: if both systems belong to the civil-law tradition, what distinguishes civilian use of prior decisions from a system in which precedent formally binds? Louisiana and Lithuania offer a useful comparison because their institutional histories, legal cultures, and treatment of judicial decisions within the hierarchy of legal sources developed along very different paths.
THEMES
Louisiana civil law · Lithuanian law · sources of law · jurisprudence constante · precedent · comparative method · judicial reasoning · civilian tradition
STATUS
Research and manuscript preparation are underway in connection with the Baltic Jurisprudence Conference 2027 in Kaunas and Vilnius. This page does not represent the project as an accepted paper or a confirmed speaking engagement.