Modern Western thinking considers it almost unthinkable to issue a court verdict without providing the reasoning behind it. Justice and legal reasoning should be transparent and subject to potential counterarguments. Legal reasoning is regarded not only as part and parcel of the defendant's rights but also as a mechanism for exposing juridical thinking and allowing its discussion in further instances so as to achieve optimal justice. This rule, however, is far from being universal.

Even in Jewish tradition, where legality holds a prominent place in the collective ethos, this obligation was far from certain. It had its own history in various periods and cultural contexts and was occasionally discussed by prominent rabbinical scholars throughout the Middle Ages. R. Karo added a significant contribution to this discussion in two long responsa, alongside his codification works. He related the matter to his grand plan to construct courts of differing role and prestige. The functioning of the contemporary Ottoman legal system stands behind the discussion of the formal halakhic rule “provide me with the reasoning for your verdict” as discussed below.

The Talmudic Tradition regarding Legal Reasoning

Rabbinical tradition offered two formal options for the administration of justice: courts of law and the responsa literature (respectively Beit Din and She’elot u-Tshuvot in Hebrew). As mentioned in the Introduction, there were also nonformal means for securing justice. Rabbinical responsa began to evolve and play an increasing role from the Gaonic period, though there are some testimonies for its earlier functioning in late antiquity among Talmud scholars (Amora’im). Most of the responsa were composed by way of a reply to concrete persons—dispatched either by regular people or “professional” jurists—addressing rabbis of prestige for legal counsel; only a minor portion were composed as an academic drill for schooling purposes. The rabbinical responsa constitute the Jewish corollary of a jurisprudential genre customary in Roman law, later in European writing (the Consilium), and in the Muslim legal tradition (the Fatwa). I shall seek in particular to draw attention to the deep similarity in its mode of use among Muslim and Jewish legal scholars.

The Jewish courts of law that operated under the constraints of majority society, be it Sassanian, Roman, Islamic, or European Catholic were the more accessible of the two frameworks.