Law as Religion, Religion as Law

David C. Flatto is Professor of Law and Jewish philosophy at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His most recent book is The Crown and the Courts: Separation of Powers in the Early Imagination (Harvard University Press, 2020). Benjamin Porat is Professor of Law, Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Law, and the Director of the Matz Institute for Research in Jewish Law, at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is the author of The Principles of Welfare Regulations: From Biblical Law to Rabbinic Literature (2019).

'Too often, debates and doctrines about 'law' and 'religion' presume that these are sharply distinct, entirely separate practices or ideas. This volume enriches and deepens our understandings and conversations by reminding us that legal and theological reasoning are often analogous and complementary, that religious and political institutions regularly and appropriately cooperate, and that legal and religious beliefs and practices are profoundly shaped by each other.' Richard W. Garnett, Professor of Law, Director, Notre Dame Program on Church, State & Society, Concurrent Professor of Political Science, Notre Dame Law School

• Part I. Sanctification and Secularization: 1. Desanctification of law and the problem of absolutes Jeremy Waldron; 2. The paradox of human rights discourse and the Jewish legal tradition Suzanne Last Stone; 3. Sovereign imaginaries: visualizing the sacred foundation of law's authority Richard K. Sherwin; Part II. Legal-Religious Language: 4. Dat: from law to religion: the transformation of formative term in modern times Abraham Melamed; 5. Law as religion, religion as law: Halakhah from a semiotic point of view Bernard S. Jackson; 6. Canonicity as a defining feature of legal and religious discourse: a programmatic essay Daniel Reifman; Part III. Legal-Theological Roots: 7. Exceptional grace: religion as the sovereign suspension of law Robert Yelle; 8. A bad man theory of religious law (numbers 15:30-31 and its afterlife) David C. Flatto; 9. Soviet law and political religion Dmytro Vovk; 10. International law as evangelism Kevin Crow; Part IV. Religious Conceptions of Law: 11. 'Enjoin them upon your children to keep' (Deuteronomy 32:46): law as commandment and legacy, or, Robert Cover meets Midrash Steven D. Fraade; 12. 'Between man and god' and 'Between man and his fellow': categories in Polemical context Itzhak Brand; 13. Christian feasts and administration of Roman justice in late antiquity Silvia Schiavo; Part V. Law in Formation: Religious Perspectives: 14. Law as a problematic aspect of religion: Paul's skepticism in a broader Jewish context Serge Ruzer; 15. When law meets theology: legality and revelation in the Jewish, Islamic, and Zoroastrian traditions in the Abbasid period Yishai Kiel.