Q&A: Religious Court Rulings
Originally published:
This is an English translation (via GPT-5.4). Read the original Hebrew version.
Religious Court Rulings
Question
With God’s help,
Is there room in the Jewish legal system for ruling based on a judge’s intuition, as in the civil legal system? And if so, what is the source for that?
Answer
Yes. In monetary law, fundamentally everything is determined by the judge’s judgment, but in other areas the judge can only withdraw from a deceitful case. See Maimonides, Laws of the Sanhedrin, beginning of chapter 20 and beginning of chapter 24.
Discussion on Answer
That’s the source cited there by the commentaries.
Like the Amoraim in tractate Ketubot, who transferred an oath from a woman to her opposing party because someone they trusted said she was a liar, and they similarly weakened the validity of a document.