A court of two judges validates a document. Is this valid?
Document validation is classified as a judicial act (din) requiring three judges, even though the underlying obligation is Rabbinic. Two are insufficient.
Question 2
To validate by comparing signatures, the reference documents must be:
Reference documents must be in the hands of a neutral party, not the person seeking to validate his document. This prevents forgery of the comparison documents.
Question 3
A court writes 'in a session of three we validated this document' but does not specify which of the five methods they used. Is the validation accepted?
Courts are presumed expert and honest. We do not investigate how another court validated a document — only the reliability of witnesses is subject to examination.
Question 4
One of three validating judges dies after the other two have already signed. What must be done?
If only two signatures appear, observers may incorrectly conclude the validation was by only two judges. Therefore, the remaining judges must note that the third has died.
Question 5
Before two validating judges have signed, witnesses testify that the third judge is a thief. Later, others testify he repented. May he sign?
If testimony of repentance came before the others signed, he may sign. If it came after they already signed, he may not — since at the time of signing he was not yet validated.