[dragonwriter]

> Courts are going to render a verdict, usually, based on legal principles and with broad applicability.

Appellate courts might do that (though even the vast majority of appellate decisions are narrow and, even if technically precedential, lack broad applicability.) Trial courts, whose rulings aren't even binding precendent on the same court, much less any others, do not. Even applellate courts in cases where an issue is raised which seems to offer the possibility of a ruling with broad impact often don't.

> So if you're making a run at a well-established feature of law --- say, "copyright law says you can't make copies of other people's stuff and distribute it without their permission"

I would say that the precise bounds of fair use (which absolutely does allow, under current law, in some cases, making copies of other people's stuff and distributing it without permission) is exactly the opposite of a well-established feature of copyright law; fair use is an area where the statutory rules are fuzzy and the application of them to anything that isn't almost an identical fact pattern to one that there is a prior case providing binding precedent on is...murky, at best.