“Judaism and the Foundations of American Law” was the topic of a lecture by Cordell Schulten, a member of the adjunct faculty of Fontbonne University, as part of the university’s Jewish Community Seminar Series. The event was held in Steve’s Room of the Jewish Community Center, and was sponsored by the JCC and the Jewish Community Relations Council, with the cooperation of Fontbonne University. Also sharing the sponsorship of the event was the Cardozo Society of the Jewish Federation, a group of local attorneys who support the Federation and its mission and programs. The university, under the leadership of its president, Dr. Dennis Golden, this year organized a “dedicated semester” of Jewish studies, a unique focus on “Judaism and its cultures” for a Catholic university of its size in North America.

“I am particularly honored by the co-sponsorship of the Cardozo Society,” Schulten said. “Justice Cardozo is known by American lawyers because the reading of his case decisions is part of the curriculum of every law school,” Schulten continued. “Cardozo’s legal brilliance expressed in those cases and his deep humanitarian concerns have had a profound impact on legal doctrine and practice. Justice Cardozo is an archeypal example of the influence and impact of Judaism upon American law.”

Schulten holds degrees in law and theological studies, has practiced law, received his Doctor of Law degree from Saint Louis University, and is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Theology and Culture at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis. At Fontbonne, Schulten is a lecturer in ethics, law and religion. Prior to his appointment at Fontbonne, Schulten taught as a visiting professor of law at Handong International Law School in Pohang, South Korea, and on the faculty of Missouri Baptist University, where he taught interdisciplinary studies.

Schulten thanked his Fontbonne colleague, Professor Jason Sommer for citing the late St. Louis Jewish historian Max I. Dimont’s “seminal work, Jews, God and History that had been published in 1962.” Schulten added, “Dimont made the following assertions: ‘The statement that the American system of law is based upon Roman concepts has been made so often that we take it for granted, without examining the source from which Roman laws stem. The remarkable resemblances among Roman law, present day American law and Jewish jurisprudence in Biblical days is (sic) more than mere coincidence. The Jews devised, four centuries before Christ, a legal system based on the dignity of man and individual liberty before the law, while Europe still had trial by ordeal as late as the fifteenth century. The rabbis viewed law as a vehicle for justice; laws without justice were regarded as immoral.'”

Schulten noted that Dimont also observed, “The accused was presumed to be innocent until proved guilty. He had a right to counsel and to a proper trial. He had a right to call witnesses, to confront his accusers, and to testify on his own behalf. He could not be compelled to testify against himself, and he could not be placed in double jeopardy. The accused individual was permitted to appeal, or have others appeal in his behalf, if new evidence should turn up.”

The Fontbonne lecturer pointed out that Thomas Cahill, in his popular history, The Gifts of the Jews, published in 1998, “contends that one of the gifts imparted to human civilization by the Jews was their concept of justice. It was, though, an idea of justice intertwined with mercy. Mercy is essential to the administration of justice in the realm of human experience because Torah not only conceded but also explicitly taught the finite and fallible state of humans.”

Schulten further noted, “Through my research for this course’s development in Fontbonne’s Dedicated Semester, I have become increasingly convinced that the single most important contribution to the understanding of ‘justice’ that has been made by the Judaic tradition is the role of ‘mercy’ in human efforts to work out justice in our relationships — whether those relationships be personal or within civil society.

“Thus, justice, as it is taught in Torah, is both an affirmation of the dignity of every human being, since all are created in the image of God, and an accommodation for the finitude and fallen state of humans. Torah teaches mercy in the midst of justice through its account of divine acts in response to human sin, for example, in the cases of Cain, Noah and Lot, as well as in its provisions for both procedural and substantive criminal law in ancient Israel,” Schulten said.

Schulten also cited observations on Judaism’s impact on Anglo-American law, by Alan Dershowitz, professor of law at Harvard University in his book, The Genesis of Justice. “Professor Dershowitz presents his arguments for how Judaism, Torah and the narrative accounts in the Book of Genesis in particular, provide foundations for modern morality and law.”

Schulten added that Bernard Jackson, Alliance Professor of Modern Jewish Studies at the University of Manchester in England, and co-director of the university’s Centre for Modern Jewish Studies, cites examples of Jewish influence on modern law in his article “‘Law’ and ‘Justice’ in the Bible.” Jackson “cites Moses’s decision in the case of the daughters of Zelophehad, recorded in Numbers, chapter 27 as a prime example of the administration of this concept of ‘justice’ in the activity of adjudication.”

Schulten summarized, “In each of the foregoing areas of law we may trace foundational ideas back to Torah: Subject matter jurisdiction in dispute resolution; the essential nature of order in criminal law; duty in tort; promise in contract and rights in property law. These five are but a few examples of how the Jewish idea of justice is worked out in practice as both an affirmation of the dignity of every human being, since all are created in the image of God, and an accommodation for the finitude and fallen state of humans and how that essential idea provides foundations for aspects of our American legal system.”