Article:
Evan H. Caminker, Precedent and Prediction: The Forward-Looking Aspects of Inferior Court Decisionmaking, 73 TEXAS L. REV. 1 (1994).
 

Abstract:
The traditionally accepted view of the proper role of lower courts in the judicial hierarchy holds that they should interpret and follow legal precedents without considering what their superior courts will likely do upon appeal. Professor Caminker argues that the hierarchical values that this “precedent” model allegedly supports—judicial economy, uniformity of legal interpretation, and proficiency of interpretation—are achieved at least as well if not more effectively by a “proxy” model, by which lower courts interpret various forms of data in an attempt to predict how their superior court would decide the matter. Professor Caminker rejects the current consensus in favor of the precedent model, which reflects a view that predictive decision-making contravenes the proper jurisdictional conception of adjudication in that it asks inferior courts to decide cases according to what the law “ will be” rather than what the law actually “is.” He rejects this view on the basis that it unjustifiably privileges a particular conception of law and because inferior court decision-making should be dictated by normative considerations regarding power allocations within a hierarchical judiciary, not by abstract jurisprudential considerations.