[Avodah] Court System Models

[kennethgmiller at juno.com]

R' Liron Kopinsky wrote:
> It just occured to me this week that the US court system is
> almost exactly Yitro's advice. The more high-profile (and
> big) a court case is, the higher it gets pushed in the courts
> until it could reach the supreme court. Contrast this with
> the Halachik process, where the average person asks their
> rabbi who, if he doesn't know the answer ask his rav etc.

Your understanding of the system is very different than mine. I never heard of a case in the US which gets pushed higher and higher through the system simply because it is a high-profile case.

On the contrary, my understanding is that the US court system is very much like Moshe Rabenu's: Any infraction, whether high-profile or low-profile, is judged by the lowest court of whatever jurisdiction is relevant.

In the US system, the low courts do not have an option of saying "We don't know the answer and we are referring the matter to a higher court." Rather, in the US system, the higher courts are used when one party or the other feels that the lower court judged the case improperly, for example by allowing invalid evidence, or by disqualifying valid evidence. In such cases, the function of the higher court is NOT to re-judge the case itself, but to judge whether or not the case was judged properly. And this can go back and forth through the system, up several levels of courts. (I must point out that this is more likely to happen when the defendant can afford lawyers who are better able to make these sort of claims, and this might be why many people percieve it as a "high-profile" situation.)

HOWEVER, it is very notable that there are exceptions to the above, in which both Torah Law and (l'havdil) US law follow Yisro's system of sending a high-profile case straight to the highest court. And that is where the Melech or President is accused of a crime, which is then judged by the Sanhedrin or by the Senate or Supreme Court.

(My apologies for not citing any sources in this post. I hope I got it all right. If not, I apologize in advance, and look forward to being corrected.)

Akiva Miller
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