"The Paradox of Unanimity"

This wikilog article is a draft, it was not published yet.

by: Ryan • February 9, 2016 • no comments

From Volokh Conspiracy:

In ancient Jewish law, a unanimous guilty verdict in a capital case resulted in an acquittal of the defendant.

The voluminous commentary on Jewish law contains a number of explanations for this paradoxical rule: that the court has an obligation to seek some “merit” in the accused and to seek to preserve his/her life, and unanimity suggests that it failed to fulfill that obligation; or that the sin of someone against whom the evidence was so compelling was so great that forcing the accused to life under its burden was a harsher punishment than death itself. (A good discussion of this issue can be found here.)

But a fascinating paper about to appear in the Proceedings of the Royal Academy A (Math & Physics) suggests that there may be some additional wisdom behind the rule.