Why we prefer justice from a bet din over a secular court

Many commentaries discuss the opening word of our Parsha, wondering what to make of the words v’eileh (and these are) hamishpatim (the laws to be placed before the Jewish people).

The Medrash Tanchuma, for example, notes the difference between when the word begins or does not begin with the conjunction vov (and). Quoting Rabbi Abahu in the name of Rabbi Yosi ben Zimra, the midrash records that when the letter vov does not appear, what came before is not relevant to the here-and-now because a new narrative is being introduced. On the other hand, when the vov is present, the conjunction serves to unite what came before with what follows, in some cases adding information to glorify a previous text.

We previously learned that in Marah (15:25), G-d placed “a law and a statute” before the people, and now Moshe was being told, “And these are the laws you should [also] place before them.” The latter builds on the former.

The midrash explains that the term lifneihem (before them) is literally meant to instruct that these laws apply “before a court made up of [Jews]” and not before idolaters. The midrash asks, “How do we know that two Jewish litigants who have a need to settle a matter in court, who know that they can get the same result in front of a non-Jewish court [as in front of a bet din] have a mandate to go to the Jewish court? Because it says, “Before them (the Jewish court),” meaning not before the non-Jewish court.

It really is a simple formula, perhaps no different from understanding the rules of Shabbos; it explains why rabbis, to this day, have a problem accepting some Jews as valid witnesses on important documents such as a ketubah or a get.

The party line is that a person who violates the Shabbos (and of course there are loose definitions of this, just as much as there are hard definitions of this) is viewed as having denied that G-d created the world in six days and rested on the seventh, the acts we emulate when we keep Shabbos. How can a person who denies G-d’s role in the world serve as a witness on a document that testifies to G-d’s law?

Similarly, the midrash argues, a person who chooses not to go to a bet din is denying G-d’s role in the world, and ultimately His Torah, that instructs you to settle these monetary matters “in-house.”