Faculty Books & Edited Works

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  The Common Law in Colonial America

  William E. Nelson

  William E. Nelson here proposes a new beginning in the study of colonial legal history. Examining all archival legal material for the period 1607-1776 and synthesizing existing scholarship in a four-volume series, The Common Law in Colonial America shows how the legal systems of Britain's thirteen North American colonies--initially established in response to divergent political, economic, and religious initiatives--slowly converged into a common American legal order that differed substantially from English common law. Drawing on groundbreaking and overwhelmingly in-depth research into local court records and statutes, the first volume explores how the law of the Chesapeake colonies--Virginia and Maryland--diverged sharply from the New England colonies--Massachusetts Bay, Connecticut, New Haven, Plymouth, and Rhode Island--and traces the roots of these dissimilarities from their initial settlement until approximately 1660. Nelson pointedly examines the disparate motives of the legal systems in the respective colonies as they dealt with religion, price and labor regulations, crimes, public morals, the status of women, and the enforcement of contractual obligations. He reveals how Virginians' zeal for profit led to a harsh legal framework that efficiently squeezed payment out of debtors and labor out of servants; whereas the laws of Massachusetts were primarily concerned with the preservation of local autonomy and the moral values of family-centered farming communities. The law in the other New England colonies, Nelson argues, gravitated towards the Massachusetts model, while Maryland's law, gravitated toward that of Virginia. Comprehensive, authoritative, and extensively researched, The Common Law in Colonial America, Volume 1: The Chesapeake and New England, 1607-1660 is the definitive resource on the beginnings of the common law and its evolution during this vibrant era in America's history. William E. Nelson here proposes a new beginning in the study of colonial legal history.

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  Environmental Law and Policy: Problems, Cases, and Readings

  Richard L. Revesz

  This casebook emphasizes both the basic building blocks of environmental policy and the structure and details of the federal environmental statutes. It focuses the attention of students on how the tradeoffs between environmental goals and other social goals are resolved in the different and difficult contexts. The book pays especially close attention to the political context in which regulation takes place, looking at the impact of our federal system of government, the role of administrative agencies in the regulatory process, and the impact of interest groups. The book makes a concerted effort to introduce comparative perspectives, looking, where appropriate, at state programs, and comparable regulatory regimes in the European Union and the international community. It also focuses on the current efforts to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. The casebook has substantial introductions and extensive notes and questions designed to guide the classroom discussion. In the chapters focusing on environmental policy, it also includes some substantial excerpts from academic articles. In the other chapters, the principal academic perspectives are introduced in the notes and questions.

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  Retaking Rationality: How Cost-Benefit Analysis Can Better Protect the Environment and Our Health

  Richard L. Revesz and Michael A. Livermore

  That America's natural environment has been degraded and despoiled over the past 25 years is beyond dispute. Nor has there been any shortage of reasons why-short-sighted politicians, a society built on over-consumption, and the dramatic weakening of environmental regulations. In Retaking Rationality, Richard Revesz and Michael Livermore argue convincingly that one of the least understood-and most important-causes of our failure to protect the environment has been a misguided rejection of reason. The authors show that environmentalists, labor unions, and other progressive groups have declined to participate in the key governmental proceedings concerning the cost-benefit analysis of federal regulations. As a result of this vacuum, industry groups have captured cost-benefit analysis and used it to further their anti-regulatory ends. Beginning in 1981, the federal Office of Management and Budget and the federal courts have used cost-benefit analysis extensively to determine which environmental, health, and safety regulations are approved and which are sent back to the drawing board. The resulting imbalance in political participation has profoundly affected the nation's regulatory and legal landscape. But Revesz and Livermore contend that economic analysis of regulations is necessary and that it needn't conflict with-and can in fact support-a more compassionate approach to environmental policy. Indeed, they show that we cannot give up on rationality if we truly want to protect our natural environment. Retaking Rationality makes clear that by embracing and reforming cost-benefit analysis, and by joining reason and compassion, progressive groups can help enact strong environmental and public health regulation.

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  International Human Rights in Context: Law, Politics, Morals: Text and Materials

  Henry J. Steiner, Philip G. Alston, and Ryan Goodman

  This widely acclaimed interdisciplinary coursebook presents a diverse range of carefully edited primary and secondary materials alongside extensive text, editorial commentary, and study questions. International Human Rights in Context, Third Edition, thoroughly covers the basic characteristics of international law; evolution of the human rights movement; civil, political, economic, and social rights; the humanitarian laws of war; globalization; self-determination; women's rights; universalism and cultural relativism; intergovernmental and nongovernmental institutions; implementation and enforcement; internal application of human rights norms; and the spread of constitutionalism. Extensively revised and restructured, this third edition incorporates new themes and topics including human rights in relation to terrorism and national security; responsibility of non-state actors for human rights violations; recent substantial changes in sources and processes of international law; achieved and potential reform within UN human rights institutions; and theories about international organizations and their influence on state behavior. It is also accompanied by a website housing the Annex of Documents. Its scope, challenging enquiries, and clarity make International Human Rights in Context, Third Edition, an indispensable resource for human rights students, scholars, advocates, and practitioners alike.

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  Releasing Prisoners, Redeeming Communities: Reentry, Race, and Politics

  Anthony C. Thompson

  In the middle of the first decade of the twenty-first century, African Americans made up approximately twelve percent of the United States population but close to forty percent of the United States prison population. Now, in the latter half of the decade, the nation is in the midst of the largest multi-year discharge of prisoners in its history. In Releasing Prisoners, Redeeming Communities, Anthony C. Thompson discusses what is likely to happen to these ex-offenders and why. For Thompson, any discussion of ex-offender reentry is, de facto, a question of race. After laying out the statistics, he identifies the ways in which media and politics have contributed to the problem, especially through stereotyping and racial bias. Well aware of the potential consequences if this country fails to act, Thompson offers concrete, realizable ideas of how our policies could, and should, change.

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  Parliamentary Recklessness: Why We Need to Legislate More Carefully

  Jeremy Waldron

  The inaugural Annual John Graham Lecture was delivered on Monday, 28 July 2008, at the Heritage Hotel in Auckland.

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  Toleration and Its Limits

  Melissa S. Williams and Jeremy Waldron

  Toleration has a rich tradition in Western political philosophy. It is, after all, one of the defining topics of political philosophy--historically pivotal in the development of modern liberalism, prominent in the writings of such canonical figures as John Locke and John Stuart Mill, and central to our understanding of the idea of a society in which individuals have the right to live their own lives by their own values, left alone by the state so long as they respect the similar interests of others. Toleration and Its Limits, the latest addition to the NOMOS series, explores the philosophical nuances of the concept of toleration and its scope in contemporary liberal democratic societies. Editors Melissa S. Williams and Jeremy Waldron carefully compiled essays that address the tradition's key historical figures; its role in the development and evolution of Western political theory; its relation to morality, liberalism, and identity; and its limits and dangers. Contributors: Lawrence A. Alexander, Kathryn Abrams, Wendy Brown, Ingrid Creppell, Noah Feldman, Rainer Forst, David Heyd, Glyn Morgan, Glen Newey, Michael A. Rosenthal, Andrew Sabl, Steven D. Smith, and Alex Tuckness.

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  Ethical Problems in Federal Tax Practice

  Bernard Wolfman, Deborah H. Schenk, and Diane Ring

  The “old authors,” Bernard Wolfman and Deborah Schenk, are delighted to welcome Diane Ring as a co-author, not only because of her acumen and writing skills but also because she pulled the laboring oar on this edition. This is also an appropriate time to acknowledge our deep gratitude to Jim Holden, who was a co-author of the first three editions. Jim is a towering member of the tax bar and an expert in professional responsibility issues as they arise in tax practice. He is widely viewed as a conscience of the practicing tax bar. This edition draws heavily on the prior editions and Jim’s contributions to those earlier editions have continued to shape our work. It has been over a decade since the last edition and much has happened since then. The ABA’s Model Rules of Professional Conduct have been adopted by most states as the basis for regulating lawyer conduct within their borders and have been amended several times. As law firms have expanded and become global entities, the ethical problems faced by lawyers have taken on new dimensions and become ever more complex. After a relative period of quiet, tax shelters, particularly those used by corporations, have become a significant issue again. It has become increasingly apparent that lawyers have played an important role in designing and marketing shelters, as well as issuing opinion letters designed to protect clients from penalties. As a result the Internal Revenue Service has shifted its focus somewhat to target attorneys. The Treasury Department’s efforts to regulate tax practice through Circular 230 were met with a storm of criticism and many disagreements continue. Finally, the last decade has seen a large number of accounting and financial scandals, as well as the implosion of major corporations and accounting firms. Repeatedly commentators have asked, “Where were the lawyers?” We have designed this book to provide a framework and a source of materials for the study of the ethical problems that a lawyer faces in federal tax practice. It has evolved from our experience in teaching this subject and in our tax practice activity as well. We are convinced that that the prism of tax practice is a useful one through which to explore the most practical as well as the most abstract and philosophical of ethical concerns. We find that a professional responsibility course taught from this focus can provide insights that are peculiar to tax practice. Two of us have offered a course in Ethical Problems in Tax Practice that satisfies the ABA mandate that all law students take a course in professional responsibility. One of us has taught a more specialized course to those pursuing an LLM in tax. Those who have taught from the book before will find that the basic structure of this edition follows the earlier editions, although much material is new, and there has been some reorganization. Throughout the book we have maintained the underlying theme of role differentiation that brings to the fore the somewhat differing standards that govern the tax lawyer as advocate from those that govern the tax lawyer as advisor. This reflects the approach taken by the Model Rules, which has standards of conduct that are not quite the same for advisor and advocate. Following an introductory chapter that provides a general professional and philosophical perspective, there are four chapters that study the tax lawyer in his performance of the four overlapping roles that he commonly plays. The next chapter examines the special issues the tax lawyer confronts in government and as the lawyer for an entity. The final chapter turns to the business of the profession. The materials that we have included are not exhaustive. Every student should acquire a copy of the Model Rules of Professional Conduct (and perhaps the ethical rules that are effective in the state in which he or she will practice). Students will find other helpful materials in the Appendix. A useful reference work is Standards of Tax Practice (Wolfman, Holden and Harris 6th ed.), published by Tax Analysts.

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  Cases, Problems, and Materials on Bankruptcy

  Barry E. Adler, Douglas G. Baird, and Thomas H. Jackson

  There have been two important developments in the world of bankruptcy since the publication of the Revise Third Edition. The first is the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005, which imposes a means test on individual debtors ion bankruptcy and tinkers with the rules that govern small business debtors. The second development is not new bankruptcy law, but a significant change in bankruptcy practice. In recent years, the secured creditor has increasingly come to dominate the Chapter 11 reorganization process, usurping the traditional role of prebaunkruptcy management as the debtor in possession. These developments, along with some important recent cases, are the main subjects of the material added in this edition. Nevertheless, bankruptcy remains a domain with coherent principles that unite it. Focusing on these principles should prepare you for whatever you encounter, regardless when or in what form new bankruptcy legislation comes to us.

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  Buying Freedom: The Ethics and Economics of Slave Redemption

  Kwame Anthony Appiah and Martin Bunzl

  If “slavery” is defined broadly to include bonded child labor and forced prostitution, there are upward of 25 million slaves in the world today. Individuals and groups are freeing some slaves by buying them from their enslavers. But slave redemption is as controversial today as it was in pre-Civil War America. In Buying Freedom, Kwame Anthony Appiah and Martin Bunzl bring together economists, anthropologists, historians, and philosophers for the first comprehensive examination of the practical and ethical implications of slave redemption. While recognizing the obvious virtue of the desire to buy the freedom of slaves, the contributors ask difficult and troubling questions: Does redeeming slaves actually increase the demand for—and so the number of—slaves? And what about cases where it is far from clear that redemption will improve the material condition, or increase the real freedom, of a slave? Buying Freedom includes essays by the editors and by Dean Karlan and Alan Krueger, Carol Ann Rogers and Kenneth Swinnerton, Arnab Basu and Nancy Chau, Stanley Engerman, Jonathan Conning and Michael Kevane, Jok Madut Jok, Ann McDougall, Lisa Cook, Margaret Kellow, John Stauffer, and Howard McGary.

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  Workplace Discrimination, Privacy and Security in an Age of Terrorism

  Matthew Bodie and Samuel Estreicher

  The waves rippling out from the attacks of September 11, 2001 have touched the U.S. workplace profoundly. From policy-driven rationales for discrimination to marked increases in workers’ emotional disorders, the entire fabric of employment in the U.S. bristles with a web of unprecedented legal issues. Dealing with a wide range of these important and troubling matters, this remarkable book offers seventeen insightful evaluations of some of the core relevant concerns, including the following: workplace discrimination in the context of the war on terror; profiling based on nationality; English-only rules; protections provided to immigrant workers; “enemy combatant” designation; electronic information generated about employees; monitoring electronic mail; military leaves of absence; vulnerability to labor strikes in an age of terror; efforts to limit labor’s freedom of association based on security-related arguments; impact of national security concerns on federal government employees; employee assistance programs; mental injuries such as post-traumatic stress disorder; and workers’ stress in the context of federal workplace statutes. As workers, firms, and governments adapt to the new environment of global insecurity, this book will prove invaluable to all professionals engaged in ensuring the economic health of the U.S. workplace. These papers are sure to provide practitioners, agencies, and academics with a clearly outlined starting point for the debates to come.

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  Civil Litigation in New York

  Oscar G. Chase and Robert A. Barker

  We are very pleased to present the fifth edition of Civil Litigation in New York. We are gratified by the warm reception the casebook continues to receive from student and professors throughout New York and beyond. Our goal continues to be the provision of a book that is readable, as reasonably thorough as space permits, and as thought-provoking as the many interesting issues raised by modern litigation allow. We have maintained the basic structure of the book that has well-served students and teachers in the more than twenty years since the appearance of the first edition. You will find that important new cases have been added and statutory changes noted, but we have avoided change for change’s sake and have thus retained the cases that make up the “canon” of our subject. . . . Civil litigation in New York is complex and demanding. It calls on such advocacy skills as oral argument, brief writing and cross-examination, but even more does it demand familiarity with the “law” of litigation. The purpose of this book is to help you learn that law in the context in which an advocate must apply it. We hope that you will not only become familiar with the rules of New York practice but that you will develop a sense of how they can be creatively applied. To that end we have included in each chapter litigation problems which are designed to help you put the law into a practical perspective. The problems are based on realistic situations (sometimes on actual cases) and therefore raise the sorts of difficult issues which can arise in the course of any action. Usually, you will find that we have presented the problem prior to the material which bears on it. This will hopefully make the material less abstract and more involving. Many of the problems do not have a single answer which is correct in an absolute sense. As with most legal issues there are various possible solutions, each with its own supporting arguments. Please approach them in that spirit. In keeping with its purposes, the book is organized roughly along the path litigation normally takes, starting with the rules governing the choice of forum. Since there is no route which all lawsuits must follow, and since there are some rules of litigation (e.g., those governing motion practice) which are relevant to several stages of a lawsuit, you should not take the linear organization we have adopted as exemplifying all lawsuits or as an approach you would always follow in practice. Use it, rather, to gain and keep a general sense of litigation as a process with a beginning, middle and clearly defined goal. The variety of paths litigation can take brings us to another point about the study of it. The flexibility of modern civil procedure, including that of New York, allows and therefore requires the lawyer to make frequent tactical choices. Should one make a particular motion? Obtain a provisional remedy? Seek discovery? If so, what kind? How should the pleading be drafted? It is our view that an effective advocate knows what the ethical choices are in every situation and dose his or her best to pick the alternative which will maximize the client’s chances of success. Thus, as you read the cases and problems which follow, we urge you to think about and evaluate the choices that the litigants made. The management of litigation system in pursuit of success is not the only challenge to the student or attorney. Equally fulfilling, if not more so, is participation in the ongoing effort to reform and improve the system. This book goes to press during a period of widespread criticism of civil litigation as a method of resolve disputes. How the system can and should be changed in response to its critics is therefore a particularly timely issue now; there is no doubt that the search for improvement will continue during the professional lifetime of today’s student. Thus, these materials frequently encourage you to step back from the process and ask “How can we make this better?”

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  Civil Litigation in Comparative Context

  Oscar G. Chase and Helen Hershkoff

  This book reflects a fortuitous collaboration among its authors. As a group, we teach and practice law on three different continents and have explored civil procedure from a comparative point of view in a number of venues over the past decades. When we realized—through our own teaching experience—that there was no accessible set of materials to support a course in comparative procedure, we decided to fill that gap through our collective effort. We have learned an enormous amount from each other during the ensuing period of discussion and correspondence, and we hope that the fruits of this collaboration resonate throughout the book. We designed the book in the hope of presenting materials that expose students to the many fascinating varieties of process one encounters in the world’s procedural systems. Professors who share our sense of the importance of the transnational study of law may wish to assign it as a supplement to a traditional casebook in an introductory procedure course. We also encourage proceduralists and comparatists to offer a comparative procedure course in the university in which they teach, wherever it may be located. We hope, too, that this book will serve as a brief but adequate guide to scholars, lawyers, and judges who are curious about “how others do it,” i.e., how nations other than their own meet the challenge of disputing in the modern world.

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  Civil Litigation in Comparative Context

  Oscar G. Chase, Helen Hershkoff, Linda J. Silberman, Yasuhei Taniguchi, Vincenzo Varano, and Adrian Zuckerman

  Civil Litigation in Comparative Context opens with a treatment of the principal differences among the major civil litigation systems. Subsequent chapters cover: Organization of the courts and the legal profession Roles of the attorney and judge Processes of learning and proving facts Short cuts to judgment and provisional remedies Appellate process Enforcement of judgments Prospects for convergence and harmonization The book can be used as an adjunct to an introductory civil procedure course, the text for an upper-class seminar in comparative procedure, and a supplement to the existing general comparative law casebooks.

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  Federal Standards of Review: Review of District Court Decisions and Agency Actions

  Harry T. Edwards and Linda A. Elliott

  Judge Harry T. Edwards and Linda A. Elliott have produced a thoughtful, thorough, and informative text that masterfully explains the standards controlling how the U.S. Courts of Appeals review district court decisions and agency actions. Their book guides readers through a variety of issues critical to appellate decisionmaking, including the ways in which the key statutes and rules governing appellate review of district court decisions are interpreted and applied; the effect of the Administrative Procedure Act on review of agency decisions; the deference due an agency's construction of its authorizing statute pursuant to Chevron and its progeny; and the role and limits of the fact/law paradigm in appellate decisionmaking. Offering a sophisticated but easy to understand exposition of the complex review doctrines defining federal appellate decisionmaking, Federal Courts Standards of Review is an invaluable resource for trial and appellate practitioners, law students, and judicial law clerks.

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  Antitrust Consent Decrees in Theory and Practice: Why Less Is More

  Richard A. Epstein

  For over one hundred years, the antitrust consent decree has been a major weapon in the federal enforcement of antitrust laws. In Antitrust Consent Decrees in Theory and Practice, Richard A. Epstein undertakes the first systematic study of their use and effectiveness from both a historical and analytical perspective. Epstein observes how differences in antitrust philosophy can shape the kinds of comprehensive settlements that the government will seek and the courts will grant. Epstein takes issue with aggressive antitrust enforcement strategies that seek to use government power to fundamentally alter industry structures or the business practices of regulated firms, in some instances leading to their breakup. To explain the perils of that approach, Epstein carefully examines the history of consent decree litigation, culminating in detailed studies of the AT&T breakup and the government antitrust actions against Microsoft. Applying modern theories of antitrust analysis, Epstein's central thesis is that bold antitrust remedies that are not tightly tied to a defensible theory of wrongful conduct often prove counterproductive. Such measures typically force firms to adopt business practices and structural reorganizations that substantially impede their ability to compete effectively in the marketplace. The disparate fates of AT&T and Microsoft are the result of a major and fruitful shift in thinking about the use and limits on the antitrust laws in a wide variety of industrial contexts. Antitrust Consent Decrees in Theory and Practice will be of interest to any reader who is concerned with the larger implications of the government regulation of law and business. Epstein brings nearly forty years of personal knowledge and experience to this matter. Written in a clear and nontechnical style, this book should prove an invaluable resource to any student of regulation and economic policy, as well as lawyers and policymakers concerned with antitrust litigation.

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  Economics of Property Law

  Richard A. Epstein

  This important volume gives a comprehensive overview of the economic foundations of private property law. Beginning with economic and philosophical accounts of the origins of property, the authoritative selection of articles traces the evolution of both private and common property, establishing how they coexist within a mature property rights system. Particular attention is directed towards the regulation of specific types of commons such as pastures, streets and fisheries. The study also examines the rules that govern the acquisition, protection and transfer of private property as part of a coherent system of property rights.

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  Federal Preemption: States' Powers, National Interests

  Richard A. Epstein and Michael S. Greve

  When does federal law trump state law? The arcane topic of federal preemption has become the stuff of public debate and major news stories. The partisan lines are clearly drawn. On one side, consumer advocates, plaintiffs' attorneys, and state officials argue that broad federal preemption claims interfere with the states' historic police power to protect their citizens against corporate misconduct. On the other side, corporations and federal agencies maintain that preemption is a vital safeguard against unwarranted and inconsistent state interferences with the national economy and against aggressive trial lawyers and attorneys general. Fierce struggles along these lines dominate the political debate, judicial decisions, and legal commentary in a wide range of regulatory arenas, from financial regulation to automobile safety; from clean air laws to the regulation of telecommunications, energy, and other network industries; from securities law to consumer products standards; from pharmaceutical drugs to pesticides to outboard motors. In all these areas, billions of dollars hang on regulatory nuances and arcane points of legal interpretation. The preemption debate is also being waged in the shadow of broader, sometimes constitutional arguments concerning the role and utility of federalism and "states' rights" in a modern, highly mobile, integrated economy. Legal scholars are sharply divided over both the substance of those arguments and the extent to which they should dominate economic considerations or statutory language. What the preemption debate needs is an examination that reflects the delicate interplay between our constitutional structure and the details of specific regulations. In Federal Preemption: States' Powers, National Interests, Richard A. Epstein and Michael S. Greve, two leading scholars in the field of preemption, have assembled an exceptional group of prominent legal scholars and practicing attorneys for a probing analysis and spirited discussion of these difficult issues.

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  Global Issues in Labor Law

  Samuel Estreicher

  This book emphasizes primary materials such as statutes, proposed guest worker legislation, International Labour Organization conventions, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development guidelines, company codes of conduct, World Trade Organization rulings, AFL-CIO complaints, European Union directives, and Alien Tort Claims Act decisions. The materials have been carefully edited to facilitate classroom discussion and further student research.

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  Employment Law Stories

  Samuel Estreicher and Gillian Lester

  Employment law is emerging as an important practice area. This title provides behind-the-scenes descriptions of the landmark cases—the litigants, the lawyers, the strategy—that helped shape this growing field. This account of emerging law is designed to help the student understand that, well before appellate judges are involved, the basic narrative and the doctrinal and policy potential of the case have been set by the decisions of litigants and their representatives. Several chapters are also devoted to the story behind some of the principal statutes in the area.

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  Antitrust Stories

  Eleanor M. Fox and Daniel A. Crane

  Drawing on history, economics, politics, and law, Fox and Crane’s Antitrust Stories provide a glimpse behind the texts of well-known legal opinions into the larger-than-life personalities and struggles of their antagonists and protagonists. Cases have been selected to provide a historical sampling of different eras of antitrust enforcement. They range from Standard Oil at the founding of U.S. antitrust to Microsoft in the new economy. This title is an invaluable supplement to any antitrust casebook, and the inclusion of cases with international aspects, including GE/Honeywell, Empagran, and Alcoa, makes it useful for courses on comparative or international competition policy. It is also useful as an assigned text for an undergraduate course in economic history or business regulation.

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  Regulation of Lawyers: Statutes and Regulations

  Stephen Gillers and Roy D. Simon

  Prior edition of Regulation of Lawyers: Statutes and Regulations.

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  Payment Systems and Credit Instruments

  Clayton P. Gillette, Robert E. Scott, and Alan Schwartz

  Gillette, Schwartz and Scott’s casebook provides detailed information on payment systems and credit instruments. The casebook provides the tools for fast, easy, on-point research. Part of the University Casebook Series®, it includes selected cases designed to illustrate the development of a body of law on a particular subject. Text and explanatory materials designed for law study accompany the cases.

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  Concealment and Revelation: Esotericism in Jewish Thought and Its Philosophical Implications

  Moshe Halbertal and Jackie Feldman

  During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, great new trends of Jewish thought emerged whose widely varied representatives — Kabbalists, philosophers, and astrologers — each claimed that their particular understanding revealed the actual secret of the Torah. They presented their own readings in a coded fashion that has come to be regarded by many as the very essence of esotericism. Concealment and Revelation takes us on a fascinating journey to the depths of the esoteric imagination. Carefully tracing the rise of esotericism and its function in medieval Jewish thought, Moshe Halbertal’s richly detailed historical and cultural analysis gradually builds conceptual-philosophical force to culminate in a masterful phenomenological taxonomy of esotericism and its paradoxes. Among the questions addressed: What are the internal justifications that esoteric traditions provide for their own existence, especially in the Jewish world, in which the spread of knowledge was of great importance? How do esoteric teachings coexist with the revealed tradition, and what is the relationship between the various esoteric teachings that compete with that revealed tradition? Halbertal concludes that, through the medium of the concealed, Jewish thinkers integrated into the heart of the Jewish tradition diverse cultural influences such as Aristotelianism, Neoplatonism, and Hermeticisims. And the creation of an added concealed layer, unregulated and open-ended, became the source of the most daring and radical interpretations of the tradition.

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  Judaism and the Challenges of Modern Life

  Moshe Halbertal and Donniel Hartman

  Much more than a particular period in world history, modernity has fundamentally transformed how we think and live, and especially how we understand and relate to religious traditions. As the 'ghetto walls' have fallen, both empirically and metaphorically, Judaism is compelled to compete in an open marketplace of ideas. Jews can no longer count on an assumedly necessary Jewish identity or commitment, nor on the rallying force of anti-Semitism to ensure an individual and collective sense of belonging. Rather Jewish moral, spiritual and historical values and ideas must be read with new eyes and challenged to address modernity's proliferating array of questions and realities. The pertinent questions modern Jewry faces are how to embrace modernity as Jews and what such an embrace means for the meaning and future of Jewish life. This collection of essays, authored by scholars of the Shalom Hartman Institute, addresses three critical challenges posed to Judaism by modernity: the challenge of ideas, the challenge of diversity, and the challenge of statehood, and provides insights and ideas for the future direction of Judaism. Providing readers with new insights into Judaism and the Jewish people in contemporary times, the collection explores a wide range of issues that includes: the significance of Israel for the future of Judaism; the Jewish people as a people; the relationship between monotheism and violence; revelation and ethics; Judaism and the feminist challenge; and Judaism and homosexuality.