A court of Jewish law. From the very earliest times, we are told, Moses judged the people "from the morning to the evening" (Ex. 18:13) until advised by his father-in-law, Jethro, to decentralize the system. Judges were then appointed "over thousands, hundreds, fifties, and tens," with the proviso that any case too difficult for the judges to handle would be referred upward, eventually to Moses. The Torah, too, cautioned (Deut. 17:8), "If there arise a matter too hard for you in judgment ... then shall you arise, and get you up into the place which the Lord your God shall choose."
Later, after Israel entered the Land, there were judges who were also leaders of the people. Many of the kings also served in the capacity of judges, the classic example being Solomon.
The Talmud indicates that in Second Temple times there were various courts, consisting of three, 23, or 71 judges. Different types of cases were tried by batté din (courts) of a specific size, but there was no appeal of a verdict to a higher court. Only where an inferior court was unable to come to a decision on the law was a case referred upward.
Each locality had a court consisting of three judges, which was authorized to rule on civil matters. Each town consisting of 120 or more adult males had a bet din of 23 judges (San. 1:6), which was empowered to rule on questions of corporal and capital punishment (ibid. 1:4). Cases involving capital crimes required a majority of two for conviction. According to one view, Jerusalem had three courts of 23 members, one of which sat at the entrance to the Temple Mount, one at the entrance to the Temple courtyard, and one in the Chamber of Hewn Stone. Finally, there was the Sanhedrin, which consisted of 71 members. Questions which could not be answered by the local 23-judge courts were sent to the 23-judge courts in Jerusalem and, if these were unable to decide, the question was sent on to the Sanhedrin.
Decisions of the Sanhedrin were final and binding on all of Israel. In fact, should a Torah scholar differ with a verdict of the Sanhedrin, he was deemed a zaken mamreh---a "rebellious elder"---and was liable to the death penalty.
The Sanhedrin ruled on two basic types of issue: when it decided a question of Jewish law (i.e., legislation), the Nasi (president) presided, whereas when it acted in trials (i.e., as the highest judicial tribunal), it was headed by the av bet din (head of the bet din). Certain decisions could only be decided by the Sanhedrin, including proclaiming a person a false prophet, embarking on a non-obligatory war, and declaring a city to be an Ir Niddaḥat---one that was to be razed because all the residents were idolatrous (San. 1:5). The Sanhedrin also ruled on the appearance of the New Moon, thus deciding when the different festivals would occur.
The judges of the local courts were appointed by the Sanhedrin, based on their probity, their knowledge of the Torah, and the acquiescence of the local populace. The judges of the court at the entrance to the Temple Mount were chosen from among the local judges.
The Sanhedrin may have consisted of the three 23-member courts which met in Jerusalem, plus the av bet din and the nasi. According to another view, there were only two 23-man courts in Jerusalem, and rather than a 23-man court in the Chamber of Hewn Stone, it was the Sanhedrin, which was a separate entity consisting of 71 judges, which met there.
With the fall of Jerusalem, Johanan Ben Zakkai arranged to move the Sanhedrin to Yavneh, where it still maintained supreme authority in all areas of Jewish life, although it was unable to impose capital punishment. This authority, however, was gradually challenged by other Jewish centers as the Babylonian schools emerged as the leading institutions of Jewish learning, and by 425 CE the Sanhedrin in Yavneh had been dissolved.
For a judge to impose a monetary fine, he had to be ordained in a direct line from Moses. The judges outside the Land of Israel, who had not received this ordination, did not have the same authority as those inside the land. They were nevertheless permitted to rule in cases brought before them as they were considered to be acting as sheliḥim ("messengers") for the rabbis who had been ordained.
Before emancipation, when Jews lived in their own relatively autonomous communities, the bet din would rule on all judicial questions, whether religious, personal status, or civil cases. Even though in most cases the courts were not permitted to impose corporal punishment, they had other punitive weapons at hand, the strongest of these probably being the ḥerem, or Excommunication, an extremely severe penalty in the tightly knit Jewish communities of the time. In Spain, under authority of the Spanish king, the batté din were given extraordinarily broad powers, including the authority to impose capital punishment. Later, the Council of the Four Lands (mid-16th cent. to 1764), which controlled Jewish life in Lithuania and Poland, also exerted a tremendous amount of power, especially as the government had given it full powers of taxation. Furthermore, the Council was able to impose the ḥerem and assess fines, thus granting it the power to ensure that decisions by the batté din would indeed be binding.
With the emancipation of the Jews, the general courts now became open to them, and more and more applied to these courts for remedy. This process was no doubt accelerated as the Jewish community lost its coercive power and the state took its place. This does not, however, mean that batté din no longer exist. They are to be found in almost every center of Jewish life throughout the world. In most countries except for Israel, these batté din often deal with questions of gittin---Divorce according to halakhah. In Israel, the batté din have considerably broader powers in almost all areas of personal status, including Conversion. These powers, though, have come into conflict with those of the secular courts in Israel, and there is an ongoing struggle between the two systems on various questions. A classic instance of this is the question of classifying people converted under non-Orthodox auspices as Jews.
Throughout the world, wherever both parties sign an undertaking to abide by a bet din's ruling, it will consider civil cases between individuals as well. In the United States, there have been state court rulings that the consent by individuals to accept the ruling of a bet din is binding by civil law, just as is an agreement to submit to binding arbitration.
