Cloning and Talmudic Law

Barbara P. Billauer, Foundation for Law and Science Centers, Inc.; Institute of World Politics, has published Human Reproductive Cloning: The Intersection of Kaballa, the Bible and Biology - Parable, Exegesis and Modern Science

Under traditional Jewish Law (halacha), assessment of human reproductive cloning (HRC) has been formulated along four lines of inquiry, which I discussed in Part I of this paper. There, I analyzed five relevant doctrines of Talmudic Law, concluding that HRC fails to fulfill the obligation ‘to be fruitful and multiply’ and should be strictly prohibited. In part II, I reviewed the topic from an exigetical Biblical and Kabbalistic perspective, beginning with exploring comments of the Ramban (Nachmanides) which suggest Kabbalistic insights very much in keeping with current biology. I expand on the interrelationship of the reproductive faculties of an organism and its soul by examining the development of the spiritual states of plant, animal and human and noting the commensurate evolution with its reproductive facilities. Speculating that the reproductive mechanism of each species is indelibly related to its soul-state, I suggest that interfering with human sexual reproduction by HRC has the same effect the Ramban argues is the result of Kilayim (interbreeding), i.e., wrecking havoc with the Universe.



In this Part III, I postulate a biologic explanation for warnings found in the Golemic Literature and suggest that these allude to the importance of maintaining human genetic diversity through sexual reproduction. The conclusions I reached after evaluating the propriety of HRC under a Kabbalistic/metaphysical index comports with those I reached using a traditional legal /halachic inquiry in Part I. Thus, both systems arrive at the conclusion that HRC is in violation of the divine and natural order and constitute a distinct biological threat to the survival of the human species, a conclusions in accord with current scientific thinking.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.

A New Book on Law and the Bible

Recently published by Jonathan Burnside, God, Justice, and Society: Aspects of Law and Legality in the Bible (Oxford, 2010). Here is the abstract.

What is the real meaning of 'an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth'? Where did the idea for the 'Jubilee 2000' and 'Drop the Debt' campaigns come from? And what, really, are the 'Ten Commandments'? In God, Justice, and Society , Jonathan Burnside looks at aspects of law and legality in the Bible, from the patriarchal narratives in the Hebrew Bible through to the trials of Jesus in the New Testament. He explores the nature of biblical law, legal thinking, and legal institutions by setting the biblical texts in their literary, social, and theological context.

Burnside questions the biblical texts from the perspective of an academic lawyer and criminologist and asks what the biblical materials contribute to our understanding about the nature and character of law. He examines much of biblical law and narrative that has formed the basis of Western civilization, while at the same time exploring differences between biblical law and modern legal concepts and legal assumptions. The resulting book is a cross-disciplinary analysis which recognizes the integration of law and theology.

God, Justice and Society presents biblical law as an integration of instructional genres in the Bible which together express a vision of a society ultimately accountable to God. Burnside seeks to understand both the application of law and legal theory to the Bible and the extent to which biblical law contributes important insights into legal dilemmas in today's world.

A holistic teaching website to support this book, containing downloadable resources, is available at www.seekjustice.co.uk.

Prison, Hip Hop, and Islam

SpearIt, Saint Louis University School of Law, has published Spreading the Faith: Music and Culture, in Muslims in U.S. Prisons (Nawal Ammar, ed.; Lynne Rienner Publications) (forthcoming). Here is the abstract.

This chapter argues that prison and hip hop culture are major factors in the popularity and growth of Islam in the United States. The connections among Islam, prisons, and hip hop culture are profound, and all three share a deeply intertwined history; the more one studies Islam in the U.S., the student will be led to the powerful sanctuaries of prisons and hip hop culture, where Islam’s presence is pronounced. This work combines textual analysis of musical cultural productions and scholarly research on prison culture to show hip hop and prison culture as two primary sites of religious conversion. In these cultural spheres, Islam has found a steady stream of new recruits which contribute to Islam as the fastest growing religion in the United States.

The full text is not currently available from SSRN.

A Collection on Law and Magic

New publication: Law and Magic: A Collection of Essays (Christine A. Corcos, ed., Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 2010). This collection of 24 essays explores the very rich ways in which the rule of law and the practice of magic enrich and inform each other. The authors bring both a U.S. and a comparative law perspective while examining areas such as law and religion, criminal law, intellectual property law, the law of evidence, and animal rights. Topics include alchemy in fifteenth-century England, a discussion of how a courtroom is like a magic show, stage hypnotism and the law, Scottish witchcraft trials in the eighteenth century, the question of whether stage magicians can look to intellectual property to protect their rights, tarot card readings and the First Amendment, and an analysis of whether a magician can be qualified as an expert witness under the Federal Rules of Evidence.

Religious Leaders and Constitutional Law

John M. Kang, St. Thomas University School of Law, has published "Appeal to Heaven: On the Religious Origins of the Constitutional Right of Revolution," at 18 William & Mary Bill of Rights 281 (2009). Here is the abstract.

This Article explores the religious origins of the right to alter or abolish government. I show in Part I that the right was widely accepted among the American colonies as expressed through their constitutions and, later, the federal constitution. In Part II, I usher the reader back in time and across the continent to seventeenth century England. There, I introduce two men who would have abhorred everything about American constitutional democracy - King James I and the philosopher Sir Robert Filmer. Both men, prominent in their respective domains of authority, devoted themselves to the governing axiom that kings were bequeathed a right by God to absolute rule. Part III sketches the seventeenth century arguments of two other Englishmen, also prominent--the philosophers John Locke and Algernon Sidney - who challenged James and Filmer. Locke and Sidney argued that God had never sanctioned the divine right of kings and instead had justified the people’s right to overthrow tyrants.

The arguments of Locke and Sidney will, as I show in subsequent sections, influence the American clergy who supported war against Britain and the right of revolution in general. Indeed, the development of this connection will occupy me for the remainder of the Article, but, in Part IV, I take a brief respite to summarize the historical circumstances that severely hampered governmental control over religion in colonial America and thus provided partially autonomous spaces for people to reflect on religion, including in ways that would inform their right to alter or abolish government. I illustrate in Part V how several prominent American clergymen, following Locke and Sidney, rejected as impossible the divine and supposedly infallible status of rulers. God, the clergy insisted, was the only one who could claim such infallibility; the clergy warned that rulers would do well to devote themselves to the people’s well being, not the former’s aggrandizement. In Part VI, I argue that, again echoing Locke and Sidney, a prominent group of American clergymen insisted that, contrary to the anti-democratic jeers of monarchists, God had given people the capacity for reason which enabled them to make meaningful decisions about their political future. I conclude in Part VII by illustrating how the federal and state constitutions following the American Revolution sought to protect conditions for the faithful to contemplate the religious meaning of the right to alter or abolish government.

Download the article at the link.

Singing About Species

Charles Darwin has his own minstrel. The Scientist's Victoria Stern writes about Philadelphia entertainer Brett Keyser, who sings about Mr. Darwin's accomplishments, both on the street and in a one-man show called "Darwinii: The Comeuppance of Man." Read more here (subscription; free).

Meanwhile, former child star and current creation science activist Kirk Cameron is engaged in a new project: handing out copies of The Origin of Species on college campuses, but he and his colleagues don't exactly want university students to come to Darwin. These copies of Mr. Darwin's seminal work have a new introduction that seeks to show why it's flawed. According to recent media reports,

The 50 page introduction that Cameron helped pen includes passages that link Darwins work with Nazi eugenics and overall mysogyny.

"You can see where [Hitler] clearly takes Darwin's ideas to some of their logical conclusions and compares certain races of people to lower evolutionary life forms," Cameron told People. "If you take Darwin's theory and extend it to its logical end, it can be used to justify all number of very horrendous things.

But Mr. Cameron may not be getting through. Said one student, "I don't think they are accomplishing what they set out to do. All these people are getting a free 'Origin of Species.' If they read the book they'll see through (the introduction)...". Read more here in a Christian Science Monitor article.

Gender and Stereotypes in Literature

Asha S. [sic], MEASS College, has published Reading Lolita in Tehran: Rehashing Orientalist Stereotypes, at 4 The Icfai University Journal of English Studies 47(March 2009). Here is the abstract.

Popular narratives produced from the west, particularly since 9/11, perpetuate negative stereotypes about Middle Eastern Muslim women. Native writers settled in the west also dish out heart-rending tales of women's oppression in fundamentalist Islamic societies, targeting a western audience long fed on tales of Islam's intolerance towards women. These 'New Orientalist' narratives, portraying Muslim women as hapless victims of Islamic fundamentalism, only serve to reinforce the stereotypes entrenched in popular western imagination. With Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran as a case in point, this paper seeks to examine how new orientalist narratives misrepresent the position of women in Islamic societies. The paper concludes that bestsellers, produced by native as well as western writers and touted as authentic representations of life in the Middle East, mostly draw a black and white distinction between western and Middle Eastern societies, depict violence and discrimination against women as characteristic of Islamic culture, and under-represent indigenous struggles for women's rights, thereby covertly suggesting that western mediation is inevitable in order to improve the condition of women in Middle Eastern societies.

Rhetoric, Law, and Religion: Jefferson's "Letter to the Danbury Baptists"

Ian C. Bartrum, Yale Law School & Vermont Law School, has published "Of Historiography and Constitutional Principle: Jefferson's Reply to the Danbury Baptists," in volume 51 of the Journal of Church & State. Here is the abstract.

This article examines the ways that the Supreme Court has used Thomas Jefferson's letter to the Danbury Baptists ("a wall of separation between church and state") as a rhetorical symbol. It finds the letter at the heart of the Court's debate over competing theories of religious neutrality. The article then explores the treatment the letter has received in several leading academic histories, and concludes that professional historians have largely tailored their arguments to match the Supreme Court's ideological divide. The article concludes that, because the goals of historical argument and legal argument are fundamentally different, this "incestuous" kind of relationship between historiography and constitutional principle is potentially destructive.

Download the paper from SSRN here.

Religious Words, Secular Argument

Jack Lee Sammons, Mercer University School of Law, has published "A Rhetorician's View of Religious Speech in Civic Argument," at 32 Seattle University Law Review 367 (2008).

This paper examines the role of religious speech in democratic civic argument by challenging liberal methods of addressing the issue of religious speech with a more rhetorical view of civic argument. The primary issue, from this perspective, is whether or not rhetoric's own constitutive restraints are adequate to address the risks of religious speech. After a brief analysis of liberal methods, the rhetorical nature of civic argument is described, and both the risks of religious speech and the constitutive restraints are examined.

Download the article from SSRN here.

Anti-Semitism and Religion in Kafka

Arnold Heidsieck, University of Southern California, has published "On Judaism, Christianity, Anti-Semitism in Kafka's the Castle, His Letters and Diaries." Here is the abstract.

In his writings Kafka scrutinized, encouraged by his friend Max Brod, the early 20th-century German-speaking disputes on the ancient Jewish origins of Christianity and attempted an explication of the Christian-Germanic ideology of anti-Semitism.

Download the paper from SSRN here.