Before Virtue: Halakhah, Dharmaśāstra, and What Law Can Create (original) (raw)

Legal Floors and Moral Ceilings: A Jewish Understanding Of Law and Ethics

2002

This paper analyzes the relationship of formal halakhah to Jewish ethical values, arguing for the necessity of extra-legal hesed, identified as autonomous action above and beyond the requirement of law ('lifnim mishurat hadin'). On halakhic, theological and philosophic grounds, the essay attempts to refute the theory of hard halakhic positivism, which maintains that formal halakhah constitutes the sole legitimate constraint upon human conduct and denies room in Judaism for moral demands advanced by conscience. Th e Ed ah J ou rn al The Edah Journal 2:2 Edah, Inc. © 2002 Tammuz 5762 IN QU IR ES IN J EW IS H ET HI CS

Hinduism as a Legal Tradition

Journal of the American Academy of Religion 75:2, 241-267, 2007

The role of law in Hinduism and the value of law as a category of Hindu studies have been underestimated. After making an initial case for the connection of dharma and law in the treatises on religious and legal duty known as Dharmaśāstra, this essay examines the role of dharma as law in other Hindu texts in order to show the possible horizons of understanding yielded by an incorporation of law into Hindu studies. Dharmaśāstra, it is argued, should be viewed as a form of legal rhetoric and its formulations of dharma understood as paradigmatic for the Hindu tradition as a whole. Finally, through a comparison with Islam and Islamic studies, the mutual modulations of law and Hinduism are examined in order to see the consequences of juxtaposing these two categories.

ASPECTS OF DHARMA Ethics Law and Action in Indian Tradition

2023

The idea of legal culture and tradition has an important place in major recent debates about the nature and aims of law. The concept of legal culture means that law should be treated as embedded in the broader culture of society. In a sense, law is culture. Concept of legal culture encompasses much more than the professional juristic realm. It refers to a more general consciousness or experience of law that is widely shared by those who constitute a nation. Culture is fundamental-a kind of lens through which all aspects of law must be perceived, or a gateway of understanding through which we must pass so as to have any genuine access to the meaning of law in society. Cultural concepts of law that emerge out of the several frames of reference in the veda, upanisad, epics, dharmasastra, the republican governments in ancient India, and the constituent assembly debates enable us to view the law in India in an integrative perspective that is closer to Indian cultural tradition and practice. The innovative value of historical and sociological approach lies in its unifying vision of the theological, cultural and positivist aspects of the concepts of law in Indian tradition. A holistic concept of law including both legal and moral perspectives seems to provide a more realistic picture of Indian legal culture and tradition. A juridical system that does not correspond to the social and cultural sensitivities of a society can not be owned by the people as their system but will be seen as something foreign and imposed. Without a conducive social and cultural conceptualization mere formal law cannot create willing legal and moral obligation and practice.

Concept of Law, Dharma and Justice: An Insight to Hindu Jurisprudence

Shanlax International Journal of Arts, Science and Humanities, 2020

Any authorities could have a robust foundation for its survival, “if it’s far based on liberty and justice”. Justice below regulation with out social justice, now no longer has any which means or significance. It isn’t any any doubt that humans due to the fact instances immemorial was hoping for justice and its survival always and ‘justice’ has been the watchword of all foremost social and political reform movements. Endless and ceaseless efforts have been made to abolish in justice, tyranny and exploitation. In the not unusual place parlance justice is equated with the whole thing this is good, mercy, charity and truth and different equal expressions. However, with inside the phrases of a Greek philosopher Thrasymachus, it can’t be described because the interest of thestronger. Justice isn’t always an irrational concept and the search for it’s far an everlasting quest. As a Hindu we in no way neglect about and notice the picture graph of a few preeminent Divine beings, for example,...

Alan J. Yuter, “Is ‘Halakhah’ Really Law?” The Jewish Law Annual, vol. 8 (1989): 35-52

The term "halakhah'* is often used to refer to Jewish "law". Both Halakhah and law have been subject to different definitions. In this essay, the compatibility of these definitions will be tested. Law and value are inextridbly bound together. The doctrine of "Natural" Law assumes that there is a universal law that is "natural" to humankind and which is grounded in a reasonable, uni versal ethic. This law is valid because of its intrinsic value, and not any power of compulsion. The medieval Christian advocates of Natural Law theory appealed to the superhuman will of a rational God.^ Common to all Natural Law theories is the doctrine that law must be more than command.^ Professor Lon Fuller argued eloquently that morality is the ground for the validity of the law,® while his colleague, H.L.A. Hart, usually a positivist thinker, concedes that there must be a moral minimum to law.^ For Judith N. Shklar, law embodies an ideology of justice.® All these theories reflect ideologi cally projected absolutes. Only a legal theory that extracts ideological considerations from its discussion can serve as an ana

The Talmudic Principle of Going Beyond the Requirements of the Law: The Cornerstone of Ethics

The Talmud blamed the destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple by the Romans on the fact that people insisted on following the strict letter of Torah law and not doing more than the law required. This paper will demonstrate the importance of stressing going beyond the requirements of the lawlifnim mishurat hadinif an individual or organization is genuinely concerned about ethical values. Keywords: going beyond the strict letter of the law, lifnim mishurat hadin, rule-driven ethics, value-driven ethics, morality and law, Talmud, justice, moral judgment in law, way of the pious.

Religious Basis of the Historical and Contemporary Law

Diacovensia

The aim of this research is to reveal historical and contemporary aspects of the similarity, difference, and interaction of Christian and legal spheres of social reality. The legal nature of the proposed study obliges the use of the formal legal (dogmatic) research method with special attention paid to the content and sanctions of legal prescriptions. Thus, the historical development confirms the constant need of mankind both in the picture of the world, the model of the worldview offered by religion, and the normative regulator based on absolute transcendental values. The fundamental role of religion in the origin and development of the law is proved by historical facts.