Comparative American and Talmudic Criminal Law

Abstract

Comparative American and Talmudic Criminal Law reflects the journey undertaken by the late Irene Merker Rosenberg and Yale L. Rosenberg in their pioneering comparative studies of Jewish law and secular criminal and juvenile law. They did not argue that contemporary secular law should be modeled on Jewish law. Rather, the authors presented the two legal systems side by side, transcended clichés about the Bible that were all too often misused to justify harsh treatment, and deeply considered the ethical underpinnings of law. A new Introduction by Irene Merker Rosenberg provides an Overview of Jewish Law — Written and Oral — including the Bible, the Oral Law, and the major commentators. It is meant to be accessible to beginners but also includes detailed footnotes in which the author delves deeply into the subject. Chapter One is Irene Merker Rosenberg’s Overview of the Talmudic Criminal Justice System in which she explains how the rabbinic legal system functioned. It demonstrates that Jewish criminal law was constrained by very strict procedural rules that created many obstacles to conviction. The chapters that follow compile the work of nearly thirty years in which the co-authors explored concepts of guilt, the force of precedent in the law, the “actus” requirement in criminal law, the dangers of predicting criminal behavior based on prior conduct, the eye-for-eye justification for capital punishment, the distinction between murder and manslaughter, the causation requirement in criminal law, circumstantial evidence, self-incrimination, and the law of capital punishment.

Keywords: Jewish law, comparative Jewish and American criminal and juvenile law, Talmudic criminal justice system, guilt, precedent in Jewish law, actus reus, future criminality, eye for an eye, murder or manslaughter, causation in homicide, circumstantial evidence, self-incrimination, capital punishment