[1] Drob viewed the creation of the committee as "the first step towards the organization of an American beit din hagadol [supreme court of Jewish law] which will study the problems arising in our new environment and solve them in the spirit of our Torah.
[4] The new name signaled the Rabbinical Assembly's hopes that Jewish practice should be guided by the highest moral standards along with traditional law.
The committee was tasked with "raising the standards of piety, understanding, and participating in Jewish life" among Conservative Jews.
[11] Conservative rabbis hold that the boundaries of Jewish law are determined through the halakhic process, a religious-ethical system of legal precedents.
Solomon Schechter writes "however great the literary value of a code may be, it does not invest it with infallibility, nor does it exempt it from the student or the Rabbi who makes use of it from the duty of examining each paragraph on its own merits, and subjecting it to the same rules of interpretation that were always applied to Tradition".
As Aaron Mackler states: "The positions authorized by the Committee offer important guidance for Conservative Jews and others.
Eash rabbi formulates decisions about numerous issues not discussed explicitly by the Committee, relying on other halakhic sources and his or her own judgment.
"[12]Gordon Tucker has argued that RA members should give "extraordinary weight" to CJLS decisions, while remaining free to disagree with then: Because it is a body that seeks to coalesce judgment around particular halakhic opinions, and not simply to give voice to individually held positions, it is right and proper that six members of the CJLS be required to define an authoritative position.
Because it is a body that is ultimately here to provide service and guidance to Rabbinical Assembly members, it is also right and proper that authoritative opinions not be categorized by the number of votes they received, and that they not be binding on Rabbinical Assembly members in a coercive sense, but rather only in the sense that we are bound by our covenant to one another to give extraordinary weight to CJLS responsa in reaching our own legal decisions.
See the discussion by Rabbi Arnold Goodman in Solemnizing the Marriage Between a Kohen and a Divorcee p. 2 (bottom) p. 3 (top.)
(Chidushai Rashba, Nedarim, p. 90b) Conservative Jewish philosophy does not allow the use of popular will to overturn Biblical or rabbinic laws.
Conservative Judaism requires responsa citing a full range of precedential authorities as part of any halakhic decision.
For examples of this view see Rabbi David Golinkin's essay "The Whys and Hows of Conservative Halakhah," Elliot N. Dorff's "The Unfolding Tradition" (esp.
The following is a list of such takkanot; note that the reasoning behind these changes is not here explained in depth; for details please see the Conservative Halakha article.
In other areas the CJLS did not issue takkanot, but found procedures to follow classical halakhah while maintaining what they view as the highest standards of moral behavior.
This has caused many to claim that the committee is very waved by popular opinion and creates inner fractions instead of attempting to making a conclusive ruling.