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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 …
Of Inkblots And Omnisignificance: Conceptualizing Secondary And Symbolic Functions Of The Ninth Amendment, In A Comparative Hermeneutic Framework, Samuel J. Levine
Of Inkblots And Omnisignificance: Conceptualizing Secondary And Symbolic Functions Of The Ninth Amendment, In A Comparative Hermeneutic Framework, Samuel J. Levine
Samuel J. Levine
In this Essay, Levine focuses on a particular hermeneutic approach common to the interpretation of the Torah and the United States Constitution: a presumption against superfluity. This presumption accords to the text a considerable degree of omnisignificance, requiring that interpreters pay careful attention to every textual phrase and nuance in an effort to find its legal meaning and implications. In light of this presumption, it might be expected that normative interpretation of both the Torah and the Constitution would preclude a methodology that allows sections of the text to remain bereft of concrete legal application. In fact, however, both the …
Halacha And Aggada: Translating Robert Cover’S Nomos And Narrative, Samuel J. Levine
Halacha And Aggada: Translating Robert Cover’S Nomos And Narrative, Samuel J. Levine
Samuel J. Levine
Levine takes a look at Robert Cover's 1983 Harvard Law Review article, Nomos and Narrative. Nomos is characterized by its heavy reliance on Jewish sources as a basis for analyzing contemporary American legal theory. The basis of narrative is the thesis that no set of legal institutions or prescriptions exists apart from the narratives that locate it and give it meaning, so law becomes not merely a system of rules to be observed, but a world in which we live. Cover's explanation of these ideas coincided with and influenced the emergence of what has become known as "legal storytelling". In …