[tirrigh-heralds] What is a Laurel precedent?

[Teceangl]

While perusing old precedents the other night, I came across this
missive from Baldwin of Erebor included in the introductions to the
first compilations of Laurel rulings ever made.  Baldwin himself was
Laurel from August of 1984 though August of 1986 and it was his
meticulous work in 1984 to create the first compiled Laurel precedents
that set the groundwork of the next 16 years of compiling each Laurel
tenure's rulings into a single, categorized document and which sparked
my assignment to combine all these into a single Combined Armory
Precedents (a work in progress I am delighted to tackle) by first
Elisabeth di Rossignol as Laurel and renewed now by Olwynn Laurel.

The explanation of what Laurel precedents are remains unchanged from
when Baldwin first wrote it:

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A precedent is an action or decision "that may be used as an example
in dealing with subsequent similar cases." The Laurel Precedents
documents are founded on the philosophy that heraldic decisions
should, whenever possible, be based on previous decisions. Every
decision should, of course, be made on the basis of the best
information available at the time; but once a specific practice has
been adopted or rejected, the precedent set thereby should not be
lightly disregarded.

Knowledge of SCA heraldry can be derived from four sources: (1) the
Rules for Heraldic Submissions, (2) policy statements made in the
Laurel correspondence, (3) explicit comments made on submissions that
have been processed, and (4) the submissions themselves.

The Rules for Heraldic Submissions have the advantage of being
explicit, but they cannot be comprehensive; one still needs to know
how the rules are to be applied. Policy statements are often more
directly applicable than the rules, but they, too, require
substantiation. Comments made on submissions provide immediate
examples, but the reader may have difficulty determining the general
principle from a single instance, particularly when the comments are
sparse or inaccurate. The submissions themselves are the most accurate
gauge of what has been approved, but they are not readily accessible,
and they cannot explain why a specific action was taken, particularly
in the case of a rejection.

The Laurel Precedents documents are drawn from the second and third of
these sources. They are made up of quotations from the formal
correspondence of the Laurel Sovereign of Arms. They are a
codification, in the words of the persons who made the decisions, of
what has been called the "case law" of the SCA College of Arms. The
Precedents do not replace the Laurel letters as a source of
information, but they can make that information more accessible, by
presenting those portions of the Laurel letters that seem best to
explain SCA heraldic policy, selected, categorized, and edited.
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And remember that word: edited.  At first precedents were only
published in paper form and it was important to keep them to
manageable size, therefore information was stripped to bare-bones for
publication. Later, editing has been used to take out unnecessary
references not pertaining to the category under which the ruling is
filed - the same ruling might be seen in several different forms under
different categories in each compilation. Go to the LoAR and read the
ruling in its entirety to understand it fully, interpret it properly,
and have the best chance of being able to apply it as needed to
current cases. I've disregarded my own advice sometimes and it has
tripped me up massively, and on one occasion caused an inaccuracy to
be perpetrated for several years in the CoA. My fault for not doing
things right; do not follow my example in that!

- Teceangl
-- 
KWHSS website: http://kwhss.sca.org