Volume 17 of The Jewish Law Annual adds to the growing list of articles on Jewish law that have been published in volumes 1-16 of this series, providing English-speaking readers with scholarly articles presenting jurisprudential, historical, textual and comparative analysis of issues in Jewish law. The volume contains seven articles diverse in their scope and focus. Two articles are devoted to the halakhic thought of Rabbi A. I Kook; two treat classic legal questions: breach of a promise to marry, and the legal capacity of minors; two examine aspects of the judicial process, one exploring talmudic analyses of the biblical requirement that courts be established in every town, and the other, post-talmudic views on judicial authority in cases suspected of fraudulent claims. Another article addresses the fascinating question of the epistemic-pedagogic worldviews of the rival Tannaitic legal academics, the House of Hillel and the House of Shammai. The volume concludes with a section on Israeli legislation that adduces or is informed by Jewish law, and two reviews of a much-discussed recent book on a topic of considerable contemporary interest: the agunah problem.

Volume 16 of The Jewish Law Annual adds to the growing list of articles on Jewish Law that have been published in volumes 1-15 of this series, providing English-speaking readers with scholarly material meeting the highest academic standards. The volume contains seven articles diverse in their scope and focus, encompassing legal, historic, textual, comparitive and conceptual analysis, as well as a chronicle of cases of interest, and a survey of recent literature. Three of the articles, one of which explores references to Genesis in (western) canon law, make up a special section on the book of Genesis. The other topics covered are: suicide as an act of atonement in Jewish law; early interpretations of the Bible and Talmud as reflecting medieval legal realia; Ashkenazic codifiers in Spain; and authority, custom and innovation in the seventeenth-century Italian halakhic encyclopedia, Pahad Yitzhak.

Volume 15 of The Jewish Law Annual adds to the growing list of articles on Jewish law that have been published in volumes 1-14 of this series, providing English-speaking readers with scholarly material meeting the highest academic standards. The volume contains six articles diverse in their scope and focus, encompassing legal, historical, textual, comparative and conceptual analysis, as well as a survey of recent literature and a chronicle of cases of interest. Among the topics covered are: lying in rabbinical court proceedings; unjust enrichment; can a witness serve as judge in the same case?; Caro's Shulham Arukh v. Maimonides' Mishne Torah in the Yemenite community, the New Jersey eruv wards.

The volume contains ten articles, including a penetrating analysis of the application of Jewish price fraud law to the workings of the present-day marketplace. Diverse in their scope and focus, the articles address legal, historical, textual, comparative and conceptual questions. The volume concludes with a survey of recent literature on biblical and Jewish law, and a chronicle section, which discusses recent Israeli and American court cases involving issues where Jewish law is of particular relevance, thereby making the Annual a journal of record.

Volume 18 of The Jewish Law Annual contains six comprehensive articles on various aspects of Jewish law. Three articles address family law. One addresses the painful issue of the plight of the wife whose husband withholds conjugal relations. In a marriage where relations are withheld, the wife may seek a divorce, while her husband may withhold divorce. Prolonged withholding of divorce renders the wife an agunah, that is, a wife chained to a dead marriage and unable to start anew and rebuild her life. The author explores the halakhic feasibility of allowing a wife in such a predicament to bring a claim for damages against her husband for infliction of mental distress. If such claims are allowed, recalcitrant husbands may rethink their intransigence and consent to grant the divorce. Another article examines the evolution of halakhic thinking on the parentâe"child relationship. It traces the stages by which halakhic family law changed from a basically patriarchal system in which both mother and the child were deemed subject to the fatherâe(tm)s will, to a more balanced system where wife and husband have equal standing with respect to custody matters, and the best interest of the child is the main consideration in custody proceedings. In another article, halakhic attitudes to corporal punishment of children are analyzed. The author explores whether the "Spare the rod and spoil the child" adage, which is based on a verse from Proverbs, indeed reflects the position of Jewish law. He shows that in fact, while recourse to corporal punishment for educational purposes is permitted--subject to detailed qualifications that greatly limit its scope--two divergent approaches to corporal punishment can be discerned in the halakhic sources. One maintains that administration of corporal punishment can be a useful pedagogic tool of last resort, whereas the other seeks to minimize recourse to corporal punishment in the educational context, questioning its efficacy. The article shows that in any event, the notion that corporal punishment is required by the law, as some, invoking the "spare the rod" maxim, have maintained, is by no means borne out by the halakhic literature. The volume also features a fascinating article on the history of two societies founded in London to further the study of Jewish law using modern scholarly methodologies. One society was active at the end of the 1920s and beginning of the 1930s, the second was active a decade later. The article explains the background to the establishment of the societies and analyzes the societiesâe(tm) objectives, leaders and memberships. Both societies were founded with the intention of reformulating the classic halakhic sources in a manner that would render them suitable for contemporary application in the nascent Jewish state. But as the author shows, ultimately much of their energy was devoted to presenting the said sources to the non-Jewish legal world, for the purpose of reciprocal enrichment and edification. Rounding out the volume are two jurisprudential studies on classic legal problems. The first explores the prohibition against seeking a second legal ruling when a ruling declaring something forbidden has been handed down. What is the scope of this rule, and in what ways does it differ from the res judicata principle in western law? The author shows that both procedural and substantive readings of the prohibition were put forward in the talmudic commentaries, and explains the jurisprudential implications of these different readings. The second article examines the question of the agent who breaches his principalâe(tm)s trust, focusing on the case of the agent who executes the act he was sent to carry out, but does so for himself, rather than his principal. To what extent is he liable for ensuing damages to the principal, and is his act invariably deemed reprehensible? Another issue is the legal status of the transaction carried out by such an agent. Do the rights and obligations generated by the transaction accrue to the agent, or to the principal? And how are determinations as to the status of the transaction to be made? Is the testimony of an unfaithful agent, or one who has deviated from his mandate, deemed trustworthy? Is any role played by third parties, such as vendors, in determining the status of the transaction?

Volume 15 of The Jewish Law Annual adds to the growing list of articles on Jewish law that have been published in volumes 1-14 of this series, providing English-speaking readers with scholarly material meeting the highest academic standards. The volume contains six articles diverse in their scope and focus, encompassing legal, historical, textual, comparative and conceptual analysis, as well as a survey of recent literature and a chronicle of cases of interest. Among the topics covered are: lying in rabbinical court proceedings; unjust enrichment; can a witness serve as judge in the same case?; Caro's Shulham Arukh v. Maimonides' Mishne Torah in the Yemenite community, the New Jersey eruv wards.

First published in 2004. This collection of papers is Volume eleven of the The Jewish Law Institute. Split onto two parts, it covers topics such as The Rabbinic Law on Entry and Seizure, the Problem of Priority in Civil Law, Analogical Argument in Early Jewish law amongst others. Part two entitled Chronicle, has examples of cases.

First Published in 1992. This collection of papers is Volume ten from The Jewish Law Institute. Split onto three parts, it covers the area of Parent and Child, including amongst others, offences punishable by death, child custody, Parents and Children under Moslem Law, Physical Violence and Herod’s Domestic Court. . Part two entitled Chronicle, has examples of cases and Part three includes a survey of recent literature.

Volume 20 of The Jewish Law Annual features six detailed studies. The first three articles consider questions which fall under the rubric of halakhic methodology. The final three articles address substantive questions regarding privacy, cohabitation and medical triage. All three ‘methodological’ articles discuss creative interpretation of legal sources. Two (Cohen and Gilat) consider the positive and forward-thinking aspects of such halakhic creativity. The third (Radzyner) examines tendentious invocation of new halakhic arguments to advance an extraneous interest. Cohen explores positive creativity and surveys the innovative midrashic exegeses of R. Meir Simha Hakohen of Dvinsk, demonstrating his willingness to base rulings intended for implementation on such exegesis. Gilat examines exegetical creativity as to the laws of capital offenses. Midrashic argumentation enables the rabbinical authorities to set aside the literal sense of the harsh biblical laws, and implement more suitable penological policies. On the other hand, Radzyner’s article on tendentious innovation focuses on a situation where novel arguments were advanced in the context of a power struggle, namely, Israeli rabbinical court efforts to preserve jurisdiction. Two articles discuss contemporary dilemmas. Spira & Wainberg consider the hypothetical scenario of triage of an HIV vaccine, analyzing both the talmudic sources for resolving issues related to allocating scarce resources, and recent responsa. Warburg discusses the status of civil marriage and cohabitation vis-à-vis payment of spousal maintenance: can rabbinical courts order such payment? Schreiber’s article addresses the question of whether privacy is a core value in talmudic law: does it indeed uphold a ‘right to privacy,’ as recent scholars have claimed? The volume concludes with a review of Yuval Sinai’s Application of Jewish Law in the Israeli Courts (Hebrew).

First Published in 1987. This is Volume six of the annual published under the auspices of the Institute of Jewish Law of the Boston University School of Law. The symposium on the Philosophy of Jewish Law, which forms the main content of both this and the next issue, represents a major contribution to an area of investigation which has attracted increasing interest in recent years.