ABSTRACT
VI Conclusion VII Appendix: The Judge’s Authority in Fraudulent-Claim Cases — A
Comparative Review
I Introduction
The aim of this article is to examine how rabbinical courts handle cases they take to involve fraudulent claims (din merume), and to determine what powers — in particular, judicial discretion — they
* Yuval Sinai is director of the Center for the Practical Application of Jewish
have at their disposal in dealing with such cases. I trace the emergence and development of different legal traditions regarding judicial procedure in cases of suspected fraud in the post-talmudic literature. My main focus will be the distinction between halakhic authorities inclined to judicial activism and those who take a more passive approach. There are, of course, various definitions of these terms; here, however, by ‘judicial activism’ I mean a judge’s willingness to take on the case before him and pronounce judgment; ‘judicial passivity’ will refer to a judge’s refusal to adjudicate a given case.2 The distinction between activism and passivity invoked in this article is, therefore, not universal, but limited to the specific context at hand, namely, fraudulent claims. As I have shown elsewhere, most medieval rabbinical authorities did not consistently favor either judicial activism or judicial passivity, and this was the case at all levels of the judicial process.3
