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Between Law And Religion: Procedural Challenges To Religious Arbitration Awards, Michael Helfand
Between Law And Religion: Procedural Challenges To Religious Arbitration Awards, Michael Helfand
Michael A Helfand
This Essay presented at the Sharia and Halakha in America Conference explores the unique status of religious law as a hybrid concept that simultaneously retains the characteristics of both law and religion. To do so, the Article considers as a case study how courts should evaluate procedural challenges to religious arbitration awards. To respond to such challenges, courts must treat religious law as law when defining the contractually adopted religious procedural rules and treat religious law as religion when reviewing precisely what the religious procedural rules require. On this account, constitutional and arbitration doctrine combine to insulate religious arbitration awards …
Beit Din's Gap-Filling Function: Using Beit Din To Protect Your Client, Michael A. Helfand
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 …