Kipling333, the word "jurisprudencia" is Spanish means simply how the courts generally rule on certain matters or the aggregate of such rulings; it does not require that the ruling constitute necessarily a legal precedent.
As you know, there are two main legal systems in the world today: 1) the common law system (called "derecho anglosaj?n" here) derived from English law and currently practiced essentially in the former British colonies, and 2) the civil law system (called "sistema romano-germ?nico" by us) practiced pretty much in the rest of the world.
In the common law system, judges are paramount. A decision from the highest court constitutes law (precedent) that must be obeyed by the lower courts. The body of laws is formed slowly through the centuries by the accumulation of court precedents.
In the civil law system, the legislature is preeminent. Laws are made only by the legislature and a higher court decision is not binding on the lower courts, which can always refer to the law (statute) and interpret differently in another case. Laws are codified in a rational manner by subject matter: civil code, criminal code, code of civil procedure, etc. France after the Revolution is the birthplace of the civil law system. The codes promulgated by Napoleon beginning in 1804 were widely admired for their coherence and simplicity and copied or emulated worldwide. The Dominican Republic adopted the French Codes from its beginnings in 1844.
The two systems have tended to converge with time. In common law countries, the legislature has become more and more important as the source of laws. In civil law countries, despite the legal prohibition of having judge-made law ( except with regards to rulings by the Constitutional Court), courts sometimes do interpret statutes is such a way that it really constitutes new law, as well as create new law directly by ruling on matters not found in statutes.
In addition, lower court judges, although not bound by law to follow precedents, do follow the sense of the rulings of the Supreme Court 99% of the time. Thus the importance for lawyers to have a book like mine summarizing in a couple of sentences how the higher courts have ruled on the different civil, commercial and real estate matters. Each summary refers to the full text of the ruling from which it was taken.
http://www.listindiario.com/la-vida/2015/12/02/398775/libro-recoge-suma-de-la-jurisprudencia