Jewish Law and Black's Law Dictionary

Transcript

So let's go back to my law school year. There is no Google, there is no AI. We law students rely on Black's Law Dictionary, the most published, the most reliable dictionary for all lawyers, for all law students.

And while in law school, to my surprise, opening this Black's Law Dictionary, I found the definition of common law, canon law, Anglo-Saxon law, Roman law, but not Jewish law. Black's Law Dictionary did not define Jewish law, despite the fact that all other laws relied on Jewish law, despite the fact that 2,000 years before the Bill of Rights was even a thought, Jewish law is the law that gave us, for example, double jeopardy, civil litigation, wills, and other important points in our legal system.

So I took it upon myself to contact the West Publishing Company and forced them into defining Jewish law. Initially, they said no. After going back and forth, after writing a great paper about the influence of Jewish law, I was able to convince them. In 1996, they agreed to do so, although I have the sixth edition when I went to law school.

24 years later, when the 11th edition of the Black's Law Dictionary came out, Jewish law was defined. Love the feeling, love the idea that I was able to change history and make the point of fairness and justice to be published.