Emerging Applications of Jewish Law in American Legal Scholarship, Part II: A Preface

This issue of the Journal of Law and Religion presents the second part of a symposium dedicated to the project of exploring emerging applications of Jewish law in American legal scholarship.The first part of the symposium, published in the previous issue of the Journal, 1 represented an important development in the growing field of Jewish law in the American legal academy.The issue focused on the innovative approaches of two American law professors, Adam Chodorow, who considered the potential relevance of Jewish law to American tax law, 2 and Chaim Saiman, who applied Jewish legal theory to contemporary discussions of the place of religion in American legal discourse.3 In addition, the issue included thoughtful comments by two leading American scholars of law and religion, Kent Greenawalt and David Skeel, who addressed both the value and the possible limitations of efforts to draw upon Jewish law to illuminate areas of American legal thought.4 Building on these and other contributions to the field, the current issue of the Journal expands the scope of the project in at least two significant respects.Substantively, the articles in this issue address a subject that has been relatively underdeveloped in the literature, the application of Jewish legal thought to areas of American commercial law.Moreover, the articles are authored by a professor of economics and an Israeli law professor, respectively, thus providing perspectives beyond those of American law professors, while incorporating both an