IANAL but it's my understanding that, for low court cases, it's not that a judge is forced to abide by the case law precedents so much as that they're overwhelm

IANAL but it's my understanding that, for low court cases, it's not that a judge is forced to abide by the case law precedents so much as that they're overwhelmingly likely to, so in practice the annotations are probably essential reading for anticipating how a case will play out. And the unannotated law are probably akin to a formal tech spec - not very useful to anyone except the primary implementor, and especially not to laypeople trying to learn the law or self defend. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precedent#United_States_legal_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precedent#United_States_legal_...