What Do Judges Learn From Precedent?

It is thought to be a truism that judges cite and follow precedent.  Clearly judges cite prior cases, but do they really follow precedent or cherry pick cases that support their conclusions?  And how do we square these truisms with evidence that judges are political?  Professor Malani surveys what the legal and political science literature has discovered about judicial decision-making and talks about his work studying federal circuit splits to understand whether and how judges rely on precedent.