Especially  in  the  case  of  rights  of  property,  the  precisest
possible  definition  is  often  needed  to  prevent  litigation  and
ill-feeling  even  among  persons  sincerely  anxious  to  act
rightly ;  since  it  is  often  the  duty  of  such  persons  to  enforce
their  pecuniary  rights  to  the  full,  for  the  sake  of  others  whose
interests  they  have  in  charge.
Then  we  have  to  take  into  account  the  further  evils  that
would  result  from  inconsistency  in  the  application  of  legal
rules.  The  decisions  of  judges  would  inevitably  differ  widely
— assuming  that  no  one  was  bound  by  precedents — and  the
general  respect  for  law  would  suffer  in  proportion :  especially
as  the  consequent  inequality  in  the  treatment  of  similar
cases  could  not  but  be  felt  as  injustice.  For,  however  men
may  disagree  in  the  application  of  the  idea  of  justice,  there
is  one  point  on  which  they  agree — that  similar  cases  should
be  treated  similarly.
