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46 Rev. Jur. U.P.R. 433 (1977)
Some Aspects of Justice in Ancient Jewish Law

handle is hein.journals/rjupurco46 and id is 439 raw text is: SOME ASPECTS OF JUSTICE IN ANCIENT JEWISH LAW* Haim H. Cohn ** The most remarkable accomplishment of Helen Silving seems to me to be her encyclopedic knowledge of so many different systems of law and jurisprudence: she is at home in all civil law and common law schools and traditions no less than in the legal philosophies of antiquity-and her masterful writings open up vistas of quite unexpected harmonies and symbiosises. But she took her rise to universality from the stepping-stone of Jewish legal tradition- however unconscious she may at first have been of the spiritual inheritance devolved on her from a long line of sage and scholarly ancestors. In a very fine essay, however, she took up long ago the challenge of The Jurisprudence of the Old Testament,' deploring the neglect, at the hands of modem lawyers, of the jurisprudential riches to be explored from biblical sources. Moses and Solomon, she complained, were forgotten over Plato, Aristotle and Cicero; and she rightly stressed that the Bible belongs to our jurisprudential, as well as to our religious, culture: its reading is as much part of legal education as is the reading of Greek and Roman philosophers and lawgivers.2 At this turning point in her distinguished academic career, I thought no better or more appropriate tribute could be paid to her than presenting her with a bouquet of legal gems from ancient Jewish heritage-and I selected in her honor some examples of practical *Some of the material presented here formed part of lectures given by me at the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, Santa Barbara, California, in September, 1973, and at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, in February, 1976. The following abbreviations are used in the footnotes, viz.: B =Babylonian Talmud J ;=Jerusalem (Palestinian) Talmud M = Mishna T =Tossefta (For an explanation of these and other sources quoted, see Strack, Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash (Paperback Ed. 1959), passim. **Associate Justice, Supreme Court of Israel. 128 N.Y.U.L. Rev. 1129 (1953). 21bid.

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