Bernard Jackson

In this article, I explore some facets of the roles of legal philosophy on the one hand, theology on the other, in the construction of a theory of Jewish Law (halakhah). I commence with three issues arising primarily from the use of legal philosophy as a model for the construction of a theory of halakhah: (A) the authority system, viewed in terms of a theory of sources; (B) the relationship between law and morality; (C) the judicial role. I then turn to the theological model, noting from the start the conceptual issue of the nature of ‘religious law’ as conceived in the Jewish tradition. Downloadable from downloadable from http://jewishlawassociation.org/resources.htm

After a section of Methodological Preliminaries, I consider Truth and Argumentation in the Jewish Legal Tradition, under the following subheadings: Truth in Judaism, Truth and Norms, Truth and Language, Truth and Logic, Truth and Argumentation. I thus use an external framework in order to pose questions to the Jewish legal tradition, and identify internal resources which may provide partial answers to these questions. But are these partial answers so peculiar, theological, culturally contingent as to lack any value in terms of a potential contribution to these same issues as posed within Western jurisprudence? This may be doubted, given the West’s adoption or construction of the divine right of kings on the one hand and of holistic theories of interpretation on the other, derived from the Bible and later Jewish tradition, mediated and fortified through a Christianised Rome.