JURISDICTION
R. Cover, "The Folktales of Justice: Tales of Jurisdiction",
Capital University Law Review 14 (1985), 179-203. - In Cover's
view, law is a bridge in normative space connecting the "world-that-is"
with our projection of "alternative worlds that might be". As
such, law along with sacred writ and myth proclaim the ideal. Courts normally
charged with enforcing laws, are sometimes imperfect instruments in behalf
of autonomous law when confronted with the king as the offender or as the
obstacle to "Utopean reorderings of the world". To avoid their
own destruction, courts sometimes decline to exercise jurisdiction over
those who control armed might. Cover shows from examples drawn from the
Talmud and from Josephus's Jewish Antiquities, that when, in practice, jurisdiction
could not be used, religion may slant history to show a more courageous
court; or a religious court may boldly claim. as a matter of doctrine only,
the jurisdiction it would never dare use. Thus religion preserves the ideal
as a goal when law fails to achieve it in reality. (D.H.P.)
M. Shava, "The Rabbinical Courts in Israel: Jurisdiction Over
Non-Jews?", Journal of Church and State 27 (1985), 99-112. -
Israeli law currently gives rabbinical courts jurisdiction over matters
of "personal status", broadly defined. The rabbis, of course,
use Jewish law. Shava explores hypothetical situations in which this would
subject non-Jews to the Law of Moses. Examples include estoppel (as, for
example, when a person of questionable Jewish ancestry marries in a Jewish
ceremony, then is sued for divorce), unilateral changes of religion (which,
by law, do not defeat the jurisdiction of the court which otherwise would
rule in marital matters); succession (where some heirs or legatees are non-Jewish);
and referral to rabbinical courts by the president of the Israeli Supreme
Court. (D.H.P.)
Symposium, The Rabbinical Courts of the State of Israel, Diné
Israel 10/11 (1984), 9-299.
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