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The Constitution As Poetry, Samuel J. Levine
The Constitution As Poetry, Samuel J. Levine
Samuel J. Levine
Building upon a body of scholarship that compares constitutional interpretation to biblical and literary interpretation, and relying on an insight from a prominent nineteenth century rabbinic scholar, this Article briefly explores similarities in the interpretation of the Torah—the text of the Five Books of Moses—and the United States Constitution. Specifically, this Article draws upon Rabbi Naftali Zvi Yehudah Berlin’s (“Netziv”) intriguing suggestion that the interpretation of the text of the Torah parallels the interpretation of poetry. According to Netziv, this parallel accounts for the practice of interpreting the Torah expansively in ways that derive substantive legal rules and principles far …
Capital Punishment In Jewish Law And Its Application To The American Legal System: A Conceptual Overview, Samuel J. Levine
Capital Punishment In Jewish Law And Its Application To The American Legal System: A Conceptual Overview, Samuel J. Levine
Samuel J. Levine
In recent years, a growing body of scholarship has developed in the United States that applies concepts in Jewish law to unsettled, controversial, and challenging areas of American legal thought. One area of Jewish legal thought that has found prominence in both American court opinions and American legal scholarship concerns the approach taken by Jewish law to capital punishment. In this Essay, Levine discusses the issue of the death penalty in Jewish law as it relates to the question of the death penalty in American law, a discussion that requires the rejection of simplistic conclusions and the confrontation of the …