The equivalent in code is pre-existing libraries, and miles of them. But the law has highly developed ways of ridding itself of cruft and tech debt over time, in a way that lib dependencies really don't.
Legal precedent is a method for defining laws, not a requirement of a legal system. It is absolutely not essential to solve issues of incomplete, ambiguous, or invalid contracts.
The equivalent in code is pre-existing libraries, and miles of them. But the law has highly developed ways of ridding itself of cruft and tech debt over time, in a way that lib dependencies really don't.