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Beit Din's Gap-Filling Function: Using Beit Din To Protect Your Client, Michael A. Helfand

Michael A Helfand

This article considers how rabbinical courts play an important gap-filling role by providing parties with a forum to adjudicate a subset of religious disputes that could not be resolved in court. Under current constitutional doctrine, civil courts cannot adjudicate disputes that turn on religious doctrine and practice. By contrast, rabbinical courts can resolve such disputes--and the decisions of rabbinical courts can then be enforced by civil courts even as those same civil courts could not resolve the dispute in the first instance. In this way, rabbinical courts--like other religious arbitration tribunals--fill a void created by constitutional law, ensuring that parties …