In America we have what is called a "common law" system, where we value the rulings of previous judges even more highly than more modern judges. Aside from the question as to whether or not that's even practical or moral, I have to wonder, how long it took after the American revolution (an illegal usurpation of anything resembling precedent, ostensibly to champion the causes of liberty and a more moral legal system) before our legal system started to esteem its own history so highly as to make future changes so difficult?
I know the founding fathers didn't invent the concept, my question was when did we (America) start to REVERE the concept of precedence so highly? As I mentioned in op, the revolution itself was a clear rejection of huge amounts of English legal precedent. And to say that MUCH of our legal framework is modeled after England also isn't so much evidence of our inherent reverence of precedence itself, but rather a pragmatic assessment of what has historically worked and what hasn't, wheras the respect for precedent isn't about practicality so much as "do this becsuse this is the way it was done before"... Wheras historical PRAGMATISM is closer to "do this because it's been done before AND ACTUALLY WORKED".