[Avodah] Halacha as a System and Deriving halachah for new situations (two subjects for the price of one!)

[David Riceman via Avodah]

RJR:

<<Do you view Halacha as a system that seeks a single ultimate original 
truth(or a truth determined prior to a particular point in Jewish 
history) or one focused on a chronologically monotonic historical 
process (i.e. do we care what the Rambam originally thought or only how 
the baalei mesorah understood him through time)? If the latter, is this 
because this is what HKB"H commanded or because the rabbis determined 
this to be how an effective legal system must work?>>

RZL:

<<It's true that the amora (for example) did not necessarily have the 
case in mind, especially if it involved a new invention he probably did 
not anticipate. But nevertheless he did have in mind an essential 
property (my Rebbi referred to this as the "gedder") that determined his 
p'sak in the case he dealt with, which would also determine the p'sak in 
the case he was not aware of.>>

I think both of these are too simplistic.  One of the complications of 
halacha is that one event in real life might be classified under many 
halachic rubrics.  For example, Hazal say that each judge in a court 
judging a capital crime must cite a different source for his opinion.  
Conversely (and I think I've mentioned this problem here before) just 
because a preponderance of rabbis have ruled a particular example mutar 
or assur doesn't imply that they all used the same rubric.  The SA, as a 
synthetic book, often faces this problem, but one can find examples of 
it even among tannaim (b'X savar Rebbi k'A, ub'Y savar k'B when X and Y 
argue based on one rubric implies that Rebbi used two distinct rubrics).

David Riceman