A. Interdisciplinary and Comparative Study of Jewish Law

The most exciting development in American legal thinking in the last fifty years is the quest to understand and improve law by studying law in light of other disciplines and traditions. At the CJL, the Jewish legal tradition is studied in light of the disciplines of the humanities and in light of secular and religious legal traditions, such as American Constitutional law, Islamic law, and Canon law. The interdisciplinary and comparative study of Jewish law contributes to the understanding and development of Jewish law and enhances the academic study of other fields of Judaism and, in turn, enriches the study of Constitutional law, other religious legal traditions, and the disciplines of the humanities. To that end, the Center provides Jewish legal scholars with the vocabulary that is necessary to join a genuinely cosmopolitan intellectual conversation in which Jewish and other legal traditions and disciplines learn from one another.

Implementation:

Education:As part of Cardozo Law School's upper-level course offerings, the CJL offers courses focusing on the advanced study of Jewish law in light of American legal theory, other legal and religious traditions, and the disciplines of the humanities. Particular attention is devoted to the interaction of law and literature and of law and philosophy. This course of study fills the gap in education of two distinct groups: students proficient in Jewish legal texts who lack a sound basis in legal theory and other disciplines of the humanities and students proficient in other fields, including Jewish studies, who lack a sound basis in Jewish legal texts and legal theory. In the Spring 2004 semester, the Center offered an innovative course to specialists and novices in Jewish Law and American Legal Theory, featuring Professor Suzanne Last Stone, an authority on comparative legal theory and Jewish law as well as the Center’s director, and Rabbi Ozer Glickman, an authority on Talmudic law and faculty member of Yeshiva University's Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary. Additional courses already being offered or currently being developed include "American Constitutional Law and the Jewish Legal Tradition," "Biblical Jurisprudence," "The Idea of Justice in the Jewish, Islamic, and Western Traditions," "The Jewish Political Tradition," "The Jurisprudence of Maimonides," "The Philosophy of Private Law: Talmudic Insights," "Jewish Law and the Irrational," "Jewish Law and Contemporary Legal Issues," "Jewish Law and the State of Israel: Law and Ideology," "Jewish Law and Morality," and "Jewish Law and the Emotions in Comparative Perspective." These courses, along with others in American legal doctrine and American legal theory, comprise the core of a year-long program in Jewish and general legal theory organized under the umbrella of Cardozo’sLL.M. in Comparative Legal Thought.

In addition, CJL has begun to forge ties with other branches of the University. In Fall 2006, the Center began offering a bi-monthly lecture series to the Graduate Program in Advanced Talmudic Studies at Stern College. These lectures, which are delivered by the Director, Faculty, and Fellows of CJL, address the Talmudic topics being studied by the women from the vantagepoint of secular legal theory.

Conferences: The Center holds annual international conferences leading to publication on topics ripe for interdisciplinary and comparative study. The inaugural conference in this series,"Text, Tradition, and Reason in Comparative Perspective," took place in Fall 2004 and was published in 2006 as a special symposium issue of the Cardozo Law Review. The conference examined the competing claims to authority of text, tradition, and reason in the Jewish, Catholic, Islamic, and American Constitutional legal traditions, as well as in Confucianism. CJL's second conference, entitled"The Relationship Between Halakhah and Aggadah,"took place in May 2005, and was published as a special symposium issue in the 2007 volume of Diné Israel. The conference, which was co-sponsored by Harvard Law School, focused on the relationship between law and narrative in the talmudic corpus as well as in various other legal traditions. Our most recent conference,"Jews and the Legal Profession," took place in Fall 2006 and was co-sponsored by the American Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists, Fordham Law School’s Institute on Religion, Law, and Lawyer’s Work, Harvard Law School's Program on the Legal Profession, and New York Law School’s Center for Professional Values and Practice. The conference was made possible by special funding from The David Berg Foundation. Conference papers will be published as a volume by a University Press.

CJL's next conference will be devoted to "The Hebrew Bible in Contemporary Intellectual Discourse." Scheduled for March 16-17, 2008, this conference will be co-hosted by Hebrew University Law School's Institute for Research in Jewish Law, and is part of a conscious effort to forge closer ties between the academic communities in America and Israel.

Workshops:In order to create a community of and foster a conversation between students and scholars of law, legal theory, Jewish law, and other related disciplines, the Center sponsors a monthly Jewish law and legal theory workshop. Participants include academics working in the fields of law or Jewish studies, broadly conceived, and graduate students in either field. Participants present working papers related to methodological or substantive issues in legal theory and Jewish law. With its interdisciplinary bent, the workshop format encourages the dissemination and discussion of research, the exploration of new lines of inquiry, and the promotion of cross-disciplinary collaborations. The workshop also provides an opportunity to exchange sources, both primary and secondary, and educate other participants as to the current state of the fields of Jewish law, legal theory, and the relevant humanistic disciplines.

Reading Group: In conjunction with its workshop series, CJL convenes a reading group approximately once every three weeks devoted to seminal works and debates in the field of secular jurisprudence. Participants in the reading group include professors and graduate students in Jewish studies from Yeshiva University, Jewish Theological Seminary, Hebrew Union College, Yale, Harvard, NYU, and Princeton, and law professors from Cardozo, Rutgers, Bar-Ilan, and Central European University. The theme for the 2007-2008 reading group focuses on legal pluralism in American and Jewish law. Click here for the 2007-2008 syllabus. The theme for the 2006-2007 reading group, "Law, Interpretation, and Authority," focused on the relationship between legal interpretation and legal reasoning, the leading methodologies of legal interpretation, and the relationship of these methodologies to modes of interpretive authority. Click here for the 2006-2007 syllabus. The 2005-2006 reading group, “Dworkin and His Critics,” examined the work of Ronald Dworkin, the debates that it has sparked, and their relevance for the study of Jewish Law. Click here for the 2005-2006 syllabus.

Publications:In addition to sponsoring conferences leading to publication in law journals, the CJL has begun planning a series of groundbreaking books on important subjects that address the major intellectual themes at the core of the Center’s work. Currently in the works are a comprehensive survey of The Jewish Legal Tradition with primary texts and commentary; a handbook devoted to leading legal philosophers and their importance for the study of Jewish law; and an exhaustive curriculum for topics in Jewish law, with an emphasis on the comparative and interdisciplinary dimensions. In addition, CJL is responsible for the English section of the distinguished Jewish law journalDiné Israel, the only journal of Jewish law to publish articles in both Hebrew and English. This represents a genuine opportunity to take the journal, co-edited by Tel Aviv University Law School, in a new, more theoretical direction and create an international community of scholars in the process.

Research and Visits:The CJL supports research through visits from senior scholars, including theIvan Meyer Visiting Scholar in Comparative Jewish Law, and research fellowships for emerging scholars. In 2006-2007, CJL hosted Hanina Ben-Menahem, Montesquieu Professor of Comparative Law and Legal History at Hebrew University, as the inaugural Ivan Meyer Visiting Scholar in Comparative Jewish Law. Professor Ben-Menahem was joined by Shahar Lifshitz, Senior Lecturer, Bar-Ilan Faculty of Law, and Rabbi Ozer Glickman, Rosh Yeshiva, Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, and Senior Resident Rabbinical Scholar at the CJL. In addition, David Flatto, a Ph.D. candidate in Rabbinics at Harvard, was in residence as the inaugural Fellow of Jewish Law & Interdisciplinary Studies. During the 2007-2008 academic year, CJL will host Professors Arye Edrei, Tel-Aviv University Faculty of Law; Yair Lorberbaum, Bar-Ilan University Faculty of Law; Daniel Statman, Philosophy Department, Haifa University; and Azzan Yadin, Rutgers University.

Graduate Fellows: Beginning in the 2007-2008 academic year, CJL will provide funding for three Graduate Fellows. Fellows, who must be enrolled in a graduate program in Jewish Studies, will be fully integrated into the intellectual life of CJL. In addition, a Graduate Fellows Forum on Interdisciplinary Research will provide indispensable mentoring from leading scholars on methodological issues in interdisciplinary research. For inquiries, email jewishlaw@yu.edu.

B. Jewish Law and Global Issues

The political, moral, and social problems facing Judaism and the world-at-large in the era of globalization are best addressed by creating a community of thinkers from multiple disciplines. To that end, the CJL brings Jewish legal scholars together with thinkers from diverse religious and intellectual traditions to grapple with contemporary public issues.

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Ongoing Colloquia:The Center's inaugural colloquium, Religion and the Idea of the Secular, will discuss the relationship of religion to the secular state and to civil society. The importance of this topic is self-evident in light of the revival of religion as a potent political force in the Middle East. Within this context, Jewish legal models of interaction with and accommodation to the secular state and to civil society will be featured. The colloquium will feature the participation of scholars of Constitutional law and religious law, as well as scholars of various disciplines. The colloquium is scheduled to begin in the Spring 2008 semester, when the topic will be "Religion and State." This installment of the colloquium will investigate the way religions and political formations--from empire to nation-state--coexist.

C. Public Education

The Center provides lectures, ongoing colloquia, text study, and legal documents to a broad audience in order to introduce the Jewish legal tradition into the public sphere of ideas.

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Public Programming:In partnership with the Center for Jewish History's Jews and Justice Series, CJL develops programs to deepen public understanding of the role of Jewish law in Jewish and world history and of Jewish legal perspectives on contemporary social and political problems. Past programming consisted of panel discussions on the following topics: "The International Court of Justice & Israel's Fence: Just Politics or Justice?" "Religious Controversy in the Presidential Campaign from the Jewish Perspective," "Jewish Law and War," "Jewish Law's Contribution to Democratic Thought," "Tolerance from Within Religious Traditions," "The Jewishness of Justice Cardozo," and "Communal Responses to the Film, 'The Passion of the Christ'.” In the December 2005 installment of the “Jews and Justice Series,” CJL cosponsored an Evening with Ronald Dworkin, the foremost legal philosopher of our time, who discussed Jewish law within the context of his work, with a response from Professor Suzanne Last Stone, Director of CJL.

Professional Discourse: CJL seeks to integrate leading professionals into its expanding community through its monthly Text-Study Colloquium. This collaborative text-study group brings together professionals, law professors, and CJL faculty in an attempt to project the Center's mission to a wider audience. The topic of the inaugural Colloquium, held during the 2006-2007 year, was "Moral Dimensions of Jewish Private Law." The topic for the 2007-2008 year is "Jewish Law and Zionism."