They will know it when they see it…

Our modern case law describes precedent that sets limits on what kinds of rulings the lawyers and the judges are allowed to make. Ancient legal wisdom instead tried to instruct the judge on what rightness and wrongness looked like so he (and it was usually a man) would be able to produce rightness and eliminate wrongness with his verdicts. … The texts do not teach what the law is; they provide a model for right and wrong so that the judges will know it when they see it.—Walton and Walton, The Lost World of the Torah, 31