Responsa

Responsa (plural of Latin responsum, 'answer') comprise a body of written decisions and rulings given by legal scholars in response to questions addressed to them.

This was a systematic treatise on civil and praetorian law, consisting of responsa on real and hypothetical cases, cited by many later Roman legal writers.

[6][7][8] In rabbinic literature, the responsa are known as She'elot u-Teshuvot (Hebrew: שאלות ותשובות "questions and answers"), and comprise the body of written decisions and rulings given by poskim ("deciders of Jewish law").

Judaism's responsa constitute a special class of rabbinic literature, to be distinguished from the commentaries (meforshim)—devoted to the exegesis of the Hebrew Bible, the Mishnah, the Talmud—and from the codes of law which delineate the rules for ordinary incidents of life.

They, therefore, function as a source of law, in a manner similar to legal precedent, in that they are consulted by later decisors (poskim) in their rulings; they are also, in turn, incorporated into subsequent codes.