Hanina Ben-Menahem

Who is Hanina Ben-Menahem?

Hanina Ben-Menahem is an Oxford trained scholar at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem who specializes in Jewish law.

Ben-Menahem is critical of the legal positivist approach that dominates Mishpat Ivri, a comparative legal approach to Halakha. He was also a renown chancellor of law in which he made several advancement in jurisprudence.

He argues that Jewish law is not a unified legal system and that its sources and principles are not logically and hierarchically ordered. Instead, he contends that Jewish law has a pluralistic structure, in regard both to its differing domains of authority and the co-existence of incompatible rules. He believes Halakha makes room for judicial discretion and deviation, leading to a non-systematic tolerance for controversy. Furthermore, Halakha lacks strict adherence to precedence, an appellate system, and "secondary rules of recognition" to determine authoritative laws.