Jewish History (2017) 31: 149–171 © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2017 DOI: 10.1007/s10835-017-9275-z Competing Perspectives on Legal Decision Making in Early Modern Ashkenaz JAY R. BERKOVITZ University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, MA, USA E-mail: jrb@judnea.umass.edu Abstract The respective roles of jurists and judges in the decision-making process offers a valuable perspective on judicial practice and the delivery of justice in early modern Ashke- nazic communities. This essay is concerned with differences in the approaches of poseqim (jurists) and dayanim (judges); it suggests that these distinctions were reflections of the in- stitutional settings in which they worked, the size of their communities, and regional factors. Data unearthed from communal records and rabbinic responsa offer important evidence of disparities between the offices of early modern dayanim and poseqim, their distinct personae, and their respective views of how judicial rulings are decided. Moreover, these differences were related to the slow transition to fixed rabbinic-communal courts in western and central Europe that was a product of forces peculiar to the resettlement of Jews in the west, the de- liberate development of communal traditions, and the role of the enlightened absolutist state. The impact of the growing recourse to non-Jewish courts, especially as it evinced differences between eastern and western/central European history and culture, was also a factor. Clearly, regional forces influenced the distinct legal efforts and perspectives of judges and jurists, as did the discrete functions they were assigned, their particular training, and the institutional standing of rabbinic courts. These differences became more glaring in the two centuries prior to the collapse of the ancien régime, as structural changes in western Ashkenazic communities contributed to a new Jewish legal culture. Keywords Jewish law · Poseqim · Dayanim · Courts · Beit din · Responsa · Halakhah · Metz · Ya’ir H . ayyim Bacharach How halakhic authorities decide matters of Jewish law has long been a topic of scholarly debate but is rarely viewed as a subject of historical investiga- tion. Legal historians in general are deeply divided as to which factors exert the greatest influence on judicial decisions, on the reasoning and sources that underpin particular rulings, and as to whether it is possible to identify clear historical trends in the decision-making process. In the narrower field of Jew- ish law, rather meager scholarly attention has been devoted to the mechanics of decision making, either because most of the relevant sources, such as court and communal registers, are no longer extant or exist only in manuscript or because published texts, notably codes and rabbinic responsa, do not offer consistently clear evidence of how legal authorities came to their decisions. Owing to these lacunae, the present article limits itself to one aspect of ad- judication, the functions of poseqim (jurists) and dayanim (judges) and their