Halacha and the legal system
My question is related to a question I was unable to express in the last lesson on the legal system. You tried unsuccessfully to lead the discussion on another field, which is the legal system as a system by definition that forces the individual/the community to abide by the law. What is the Torah statement or statements regarding this? Is there a need for such a system? Perhaps it would be more accurate to say: When and in what areas is there a need and even a command to establish and operate such a system – judges and police officers will give you all your gates: What are these gates? Gates/boundaries of the sector. There is a consensus, for example, in the secular world of law: ma liberté s arrete la ou commence celle de l autre, in Hebrew: The limit of the individual's freedom is the place where this freedom collides with the freedom of the other.
Many secular legal systems are built on this important principle of preserving the various areas of freedom without one harming the other. In contrast, in a religious system, the area of what is forbidden/permitted goes beyond the interests or harm to the freedom of the individual. And it is even possible that the division between a person and a place and between a person and his fellow man is related to the subject. It seemed to me that in a religious system (no matter which religion) there is a clear statement that blurs the line between a person and a place and between a person and his fellow man, and says that at a fundamental level, the duties and systems of what is forbidden and what is permitted exist in both mechanisms. In contrast to secular thinking, which says that in everything related to oneself, a person should do what his heart desires, but as soon as it conflicts with the freedom or interest of another, the legal system and the law have something to say. Although there are exceptional cases in which we will arrest a person who is likely to harm himself (such as in the case where it is assessed that he is likely to harm his own life), this too can be undermined in societies that do not view the value of life as particularly sacred. In any case, my question that I have such difficulty expressing is: We know that there is a large gap between the fundamental laws and the possibility of their application and implementation, such as the fact that in order to impose a penalty on someone, witnesses and a warning are needed, etc., and conditions that are almost unenforceable. There is also this statement that, although the death penalty exists, it has hardly ever happened that the Sanhedrin imposed a death penalty. It turns out that there may be a statement or even a hint that there does not have to be a match between the law and the law, between the laws for the purpose of a coercive system. It is possible that the laws exist, but in the event that they are violated, we will try in every way not to apply the punishment. Is this a reservation about the validity or reliability of these laws or a desire to say that the law belongs to God.
But even if we say that the judgment is for God, when is it said that God will impose the mountain of laws on man like a bathtub?
If we know this, we may reach the point of "let him be killed and let him not pass."
In any case, regarding gentile courts, is it possible to say that the law belongs to God? And if indeed we need, for the sake of healthy social conduct, a legal system, at least this legal system will be as close as possible to a reflection of the divine law, which God supposedly gave to the Jewish people, since they represent the Torah in principle not only on the theoretical level of knowing laws and rules but also on the personal level of correcting morals, as appears in the Rambam on the heartfelt duties of the judge?
And if so, the prohibition on going to gentile or lay courts is a fundamental prohibition – that it is forbidden to approach them with the thought that they represent divine law, just as in the time of the Ramban, people were reluctant to go to doctors if they thought that it was up to the doctors to determine who should live and who should die. But as soon as a doctor is used as a tool and not as an idol, then it becomes a no-issue. At the same time, it can be said that as long as one turns to a secular or gentile legal system without seeing it as a spiritual or divine system, but rather as an instrumentalist, functionalist system, with the understanding that it actually operates exactly like the mechanism of the referee who referees a football game, then it is not a violation of the prohibition of gentile courts.
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