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36 Const. Comment. 381 (2021)
The Anxiety of Influence and Judicial Self-Aggrandizement in Rabbinic Jurisprudence

handle is hein.journals/ccum36 and id is 385 raw text is: THE ANXIETY OF INFLUENCE AND JUDICIAL SELF-AGGRANDIZEMENT IN RABBINIC JURISPRUDENCE THE CROWN AND THE COURTS: SEPARATION OF POWERS IN THE EARLY JEWISH IMAGINATION. David C. Flatto.* Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 2020. Pp. 367. $39.95 (Hardcover). Ethan J. Leib1 INTRODUCTION The separation of powers is often at the center of modern constitutional governance.2 But David Flatto's recent book, The Crown and the Courts, invites us to think about how (very) early Jewish meditations on the relationship among the monarch, the priests, the rabbis, and the law gave political theory resources for justifying judicial independence and sovereign immunity- perhaps earlier than we realized.3 The book is illuminating, learned, careful in its exegesis, and precise in its exposition. It is magisterial, and its command of its subject matter is downright intimidating. But it also embraces a method that one might call Flattonic idealism: Flatto walks us through a dialectical development of ideas that commences in Deuteronomy 17 and seemingly works * Professor of Law and Jewish Philosophy, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. 1. John D. Calamari Distinguished Professor of Law, Fordham Law School. Thanks to Elana Stein Hain, Avi Helfand, Tom Lee, Sam Levine, Chaim Saiman, and Jed Shugerman for conversations about the book under review. Thanks to my chavruta group-Rabbi David Hoffman and Peter Beinart-for constant inspiration and stimulation as we make our way through the Daf Yomi cycle together. And thanks to Steven Schlesinger for research assistance and for the perspective from Monsey, NY. 2. See generally M. J. C. VILE, CONSTITUTIONALISM AND THE SEPARATION OF POWERS (2d ed. 1998). 3. For another effort to develop the constitutional thought of early Jewish sources, see Bernard M. Levinson, The First Constitution: Rethinking the Origins of Rule of Law and Separation of Powers in Light of Deuteronomy, 27 CARDOZO L. REV. 1853 (2006). 381

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