Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 08.pdf/329

 300

of Greek law on some of the most impor tant legal relations. In like manner the Roman law left its impress on the system of the Jews; and the general doctrine enun ciated by Mar Samuel, "dina d'malkhuthe dina," "the law of the land is the law," shows the strong influence that contemporaneous legal systems had upon the Jewish law. The value of the experience of other na tions in solving questions of law was fully recognized by the Talmudists, and was ap plied in the elucidation of many points in the Jewish law. In the treatise Sanhedrin (39 b) there is a discussion upon two ap parently contradictory texts in the book of Ezekiel. In the one the prophet chides the people for not having done according to the judgments of the other nations, and in the other passage he upbraids them for having done according to the judgments of the other nations. This contradiction is explained by the Talmudists by saying that Ezekiel meant to say, " Ye have not done according to the good judgments of the other nations, but you have done according to their evil judgments"; and they imply that the good judgments, founded in principles of justice and righteousness, are worthy of imitation and adoption; a rational and practical view, and one that has guided the great lawyers, Jew and Gentile, at all times. The Influence of the Sanhedrin. After the Torah, the supreme political au thority was successively vested in the kings and the Sanhedrin. It is a remarkable fact that there are no new laws on record which can be attributed to the kings; and the de crees of the Sanhedrin which were entirely new or in derogation of the Mosaic law are exceedingly few. In that old state of society in the Orient, manners and life changed but little, and the old laws of the pre-regal period were quite as well adapted to the times of Ezra or the Maccabees. Even to this day, many of the customsof the patriarchs are, after

four thousand years, still found extant among the nomadic Arabs. It is probable that there was but little legislation of any kind after the Biblical code was completed, and the law of the land was in hand of the judges, who ap plied it in the cases before them. The San hedrin even at the period of their greatest vigor and power were more of a judicial than a legislative body. But whenever they did make law, whether in their legislative or in their supreme judicial capacity, all men were bound to follow their enactments and deci sions. The authority of the Sanhedrin arose out of the political situation of the people, but rabbinical reasoning founded this au thority upon a law in the book of Deuter onomy (xvii, 8-13). "If a matter be unknown to thee for deci sion, between blood and blood, between plea and plea, and between stroke and stroke, or matters of controversy within thy gates; then shalt thou arise, and get thee up into the place which the Lord thy God shall choose; And thou shalt come unto the priests, the Levites, and unto the judge that shall be in those days, and enquire; and they shall in form thee of the sentence of the case; And thou shalt do according to the sentence, which they may tell thee, from that place which the Lord shall choose, and thou shalt observe to do according to all that they may instruct thee : According to the sentence of the law which they shall teach thee, and according to the decision which they shall tell thee, thou shalt do; thou shalt not de part from the sentence which they shall show thee, to the right hand, nor to the left. And the man that will do presumptuously, and will not hearken unto the priest that standeth to minister there before the Lord thy God, or unto the judge, even that man shall die; and thou shalt put away the evil from Israel. And all the people shall hear, and be afraid, and do no more presumptuously." This law indicates the course of a case which is appealed from a lower court in one of the towns to the supreme court or San