PETER KNOBEL

Halakhic formalism"seeks to identify precedents from the rich literature of rabbinic Judaism in order to extrapolate principles and norms that would yield authentic Jewish prescriptions on specific issues...Viewed in this way, Jewish medical ethics evidence the same methodological concerns and qualities that one would discover in any legal process."

This process as David A. J. Richards has observed displays two major characteristics. The first is that the judge, or the rabbi in our case,"infers from the legal standards applicable to a particular situation, from a body of so-called primary authority. In Jewish law this "body of so called primary authority" includes the Bible and the Talmud which assumes a"statutory" role in the Jewish legal system, and an ongoing process of judicial opinions contained in the responsa and codes that function in a"precedential" way. Here the interpretation of the law offered in the previous case(its holding) is seen to have a bearing on the adjudication of a contemporary case that deals, in the rabbi’s opinion, with the same issue of law. A second feature of legal reasoning, related to, but not identical with the first, is that of"reasoning by analogy." Rabbis , in this instance, not only take prior holdings on a comparable issue into account when rendering their decisions, but extend "principles of law found applicable to some set of fact patterns... to other fact patterns which are in relevant respects similar."

Ellenson concludes that the method is"relatively straightforward" and involves"plumbing the depths of Jewish law and discovering there the resources to resolve a perplexing moral issues."” Halakhic formalism begins by identifying precedents from the literature of classic Judaism in order discover the principles that describe the Jewish norms which apply to a particular situation. Where the foundational law(Bible ,

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