From your description, it sounds very similar to how the German system works in practice. As I understand it (not a lawyer, married to one), a lower court will

From your description, it sounds very similar to how the German system works in practice. As I understand it (not a lawyer, married to one), a lower court will in practice basically never go against the precedent of a higher court. I think there's a sort of principle here that differs: what makes a law legitimate? One reason why I don't like the idea of common law is that it entails that tradition should carry a legal weight, above and beyond what it already always practically does. This is why people accuse Burke of 'ancestor worship' - you take ordinary, fallible people that just had the luck of living and acting in the past, then you treat their decisions as bearers of a measure of inherent authority. It might be a tolerable system if you were living in a society with a proud and morally upright history. That supposition is some of the impetus for Burke's defense of the idea of giving inherent ethical weight to tradition. I don't think any nation on earth qualifies, though.