Litigation between Jurisdictions: The Practice in Jewish Courts in Worlds of Divided Authority

• In Event: Communal, Rabbinic, and Judicial Authority in Flux: Law As Lived in the Early Modern Kehillah

Abstract

Jewish communities in early modern Italy witnessed a shift in legal practice. From voluntary reliance of parties on arbitration we see the gradual formalization of Jewish court authority, owing both to the increased size and stability of Jewish communities and (paradoxically) to increasing demands from the state for reliable procedure and documented procedure in case of appeal to outside authorities. This development is perhaps clearest in the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century communities of Pisa and Livorno, but it is already evident in papal Rome a century earlier.

Ghettoization, a process through which Italian governments recognized Jewish public space and thus also Jewish responsibility and authority over that space, contributed significantly to the growth of this legal formalization. While scholars have acknowledged the link between ghettoization and the growth of kehillah structure in Italy, they have not emphasized its particular importance for the development of internal Jewish legal practice. It may be argued as well that ghettoization also contributed to notions of Jewish public law (in addition to civil and criminal law), as we see communal courts enforcing policy practices instituted by lay councilors.

Author

• Bernard D. Cooperman, University of Maryland