Menachem Fetter (later Elon) was born in Düsseldorf, Germany,[1] into a religious Jewish family from Hasidic backgrounds.

In 1963, Elon was appointed head of the Institute for Research in Jewish Law at the Hebrew University, where he edited 10 volumes of The Annual of the Institute for Research in Jewish Law, as well as a digest of the response of the medieval authorities.

[6] Elon emerged as a prominent critic of former president of the Supreme Court Aharon Barak's judicial activism.

Elon was involved in a number of important verdicts, including the acquittal of Nazi war criminal John Demjanjuk.

Among Elon's prominent decisions were a ruling prohibiting registering the character of non-Orthodox conversions on Israeli identity cards, one ordering the return of a girl who had been transferred for adoption without her parents' consent, and the decision to order a local religious service committee to accept Leah Shakdiel as its first female member.

He served in this position until his retirement in 1993 after 16 years as a justice; he was succeeded as deputy president by Aharon Barak.

Supported by Menachem Begin and the coalition (Likud party), Elon was nearly selected as President of the State of Israel, losing in a close vote (61-57) to his childhood friend Chaim Herzog in 1983.

After retiring from the Supreme Court in 1993, he was elected President of the World Union of Jewish Studies, and served in that capacity until 2005.