These include predictability of results, the desire to treat equally everyone who faces the same or similar legal problems, the advantages to be gained when an issue is decided that affects all subsequent cases and respect for the accumulated wisdom of lawyers and judges in the past. Thus, there are important limiting features to the concept of precedent. First and foremost, a court decision will only bind a lower court if the court rendering the decision is higher in the same line of authority. For example, a decision of the U.S. Supreme Court on a matter of constitutional or ordinary federal law will bind all U.S. courts everywhere because all courts are lower and in the same line of authority as the Supreme Court in such matters. Decisions of a state supreme court on the meaning of a state law where that court sits will be binding everywhere, so long as the state court's decisions do not conflict with constitutional or federal statutory law.
American judges tend to be very cautious in their decision-making.
As a rule, they only entertain actual cases or controversies brought by litigants whose interests are in some way directly affected. In addition, judges usually decide cases on the narrowest possible grounds, avoiding, for example, constitutional issues when cases may be disposed of on non- constitutional grounds. Any other pronouncement on the law is unofficial. Another important limiting feature of the concept of precedent is that the later case must be the same or closely related to the previous one. Unless the facts are identical or substantially similar, the later court will be able to distinguish the earlier case and not be bound by it.