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date: 25 January 2021

Abstract and Keywords

This chapter explores Jewish criminal justice, first discussing the rationales that make punishment moral and not just an exercise of sovereign power. It then addresses capital punishment, decreed for thirty-six different offenses in the Torah but made virtually inoperative by the Rabbis. Next, the chapter turns to what makes a defendant criminally liable, describing the conceptions of causation, joint offenders, criminal intent, and defences in Jewish law; with that as a foundation, it asks whether there is anything like a victimless crime in Jewish law. Finally, it describes the lessons that Western criminal justice can learn from both the content and the processes of Jewish criminal law.

Keywords: capital punishment, Jewish criminal law, Torah, rabbis, criminal liability, Jewish law, causation, joint offenders, criminal intent, defence

Laurie L. Levenson

Laurie L. Levenson is the David W. Burcham Chair in Ethical Advocacy at Loyola Law School, where she teaches evidence, criminal law, criminal procedure, and ethics. She also serves as the Director of Loyola’s Center for Ethical Advocacy. She served for eight years as an Assistant United States Attorney in Los Angeles. She received her J.D. in 1980 from UCLA School of Law and her undergraduate degree from Stanford University in 1977. She was Chief Article Editor of the UCLA Law Review and a clerk for the Honorable Judge James Hunter, III, of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. She has authored over a hundred articles and nine books. She recently contributed an article on capital punishment to Jewish Choices, Jewish Voices: Social Justice (edited by Elliot N. Dorff and Danya Ruttenberg). Finally, she is an international commentator on high-profile cases and criminal justice.

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