Legal Corpus Research Articles

THE RECONCEPTUALIZATION OF KINGSHIP IN DEUTERONOMY AND THE DEUTERONOMISTIC HISTORY'S TRANSFORMATION OF TORAH

AbstractBecause the royal ideology of ancient Israel was largely identical to that of the broader ancient Near East, the points of divergence are the more remarkable. In particular the legal corpus of Deuteronomy conceptualizes the king in a way that rejects all prevailing models of monarchic power, both Israelite and Near Eastern. Deuteronomy submits a utopian manifesto for a constitutional monarchy that sharply delimits the power of the king. This redefinition of royal authority takes place as part of a larger program (Deut. xvi 18-xviii 22) whereby the authors of Deuteronomy redefine the jurisdiction of each branch of public office (local and central judicial administration, kingship, priesthood, and prophecy). Each is subordinated, first, to the requirements of cultic centralization, and, second, to the textual authority of deuteronomic Torah. This utopian delimitation of royal power never passed from constitutional vision into historical implementation: it represented such a radical departure from precedent that the Deuteronomistic Historian, precisely while seeming to implement deuteronomic law, pointedly reversed the deuteronomic program and restored to the monarch all that Deuteronomy had withheld.

Contents and Contexts the Rhetoric of Oral Traditions in the ɔman of Sefwi Wiawso, Ghana

AbstractThis article examines political oral traditions in the Sefwi (Akan) area of Ghana. Two types of narrative are studied: negotiations over the political status of stools within the kingdom and the claims to succession of matrilineal branches within stools. Narratives are analysed in relation to their claims to historicity, to the political conflicts in which they are generated and to their correspondence to legal criteria of attribution of ‘traditional’ political offices. It shows that pre‐colonial dynamic norms concerning stool status and succession turned into a fixed legal corpus in the twentieth century. Contenders’ histories have been used as evidence to judge ‘traditional’ stool disputes. Narrators have thus constructed narratives presenting ideal pasts considered worthy of legal attribution of ‘traditional’ political office. Narratives have consequently legalised narrators’ claims with reference to ancient history. The study of the context of the emergence of oral traditions—hostility between particular stool holders, national politics’ influence or conflicts over the sharing of stool revenue—shows that narratives and political conflicts have a history of their own which is carefully omitted from the narration.

Discourse Dilemmas and Courtroom Control: The Talk of Trial Judges

Scholars of legal processes no longer need to justify their preoccupation with the spoken language of the law. While in the past the study of language in legal contexts was considered an irrelevant if not frivolous endeavor that diverted attention from the serious concerns of law (Sarat and Kears 1996), today law itself has been characterized as communication or as a discourse on society (Humphreys 1985; Nelken 1996). White's notion of law as constitutive rhetoric (1985) and Bourdieu's analysis of law as the struggle for the authorized or legitimized interpretation of the texts of legal corpus and legal practice (1987) have contributed to this language-based redefinition of the law. In fact, current interest in the language of the law reflects the more general critical and interpretive trends in social theory. The deconstruction of taken-for-granted aspects of the social order that has

Échec aux Archives : la difficile affirmation d'une administration

Although the old regime produced no coherent legal corpus concerning public records, it did enact a fair number of laws and regulations on the subject. A survey of these shows that the change brought about by the French Revolution may have been less radical than was hitherto estimated : it created a new administration, yet it did not forsake the former conception of records as title-deeds. This paper examines three post-revolutionary episodes, in which the Archives administration repeatedly met with ill-success : Camus failed to extend its attributions, Daunou failed to obtain compulsory transfers, and Laborde failed to assert the Archives' administrative and historical competence against the Bibliotheque imperiale. All three cases shed light on the difficulties encountered by the new administration in its struggle for recognition, and on the varying limits of its attributions.

Calum M. Carmichael's Approach to the Laws of Deuteronomy

In three books and numerous articles, Calum M. Carmichael argues for a radical transformation in the way the laws of Deuteronomy are to be understood. His most recent work,Law and Narrative in the Bible, maintains that the legal corpus of Deuteronomy, far from being “law,” rather constitutes “literature,” in which the Deuteronomistic historian reflects upon the full range of pre-exilic Israelite narrative, Genesis through 2 Kings. In the course of this argument, Carmichael makes fundamental assertions about the composition of Deuteronomy, the history of Israelite literature, and the history of interpretation. Carmichel introduces his work as an attempt “to overturn longstanding views on material that has always been in center stage in the study of the Bible” and as “radical in its results.” His work has already generated a series of further studies of narrative allusion and drafting techniques in Deuteronomy that presuppose his arguments.

Ad Hoc and Academia

To the classicist, phrases like the legal corpus delicti and amicus curiae, like the aesthetic deus ex machina and ad unguem carry a certain unction as pre servative of a language the classicist loves. But who can say the same ad hoc, that ubiquitous prefix to Com mittee ? Seemingly, no group assigned a task in univer sity or college or high school or in any educationally ad ministrative or advisory body whatsoever can be other than an Ad Hoc Committee.,, What, really, does ad hoc add to a committee's func tion? The phrase, presumably, means for or for this purpose or for the business at hand. But is not every appointed for or for this pur pose or for the business at hand ? By what linguistic legerdemain can an ad hoc be expected to achieve what a simple committee without a qualify ing Latin prefix could not likewise bring about ? One might wish, of course, that there were no more to ad hoc than this. However, one feels, it is to be feared, in an ad hoc committee, that sense of immediacy which is so blithesomely rampant in Academia today. To do it now, immediately, without delay (and perhaps without much thought) seems to have pervaded the breath of our academic lives, often to the exclusion of any sane and reasoned approach to problems and ques tions which may well be frighteningly in need of an swers.

Humanism, Skepticism, and Pessimism in Israel

UMANISM is not a word often associated with the Old Testament. Indeed the apparent preoccupation of the authors of the Hebrew canon with God is usually taken as prima facie evidence ruling out a serious consideration of the topic. From bereiith bara' 'Elohim (Gen. 1:1) to mi bakem mikkol 'ammo YHWH 'Elohaw 'immo (II Chron. 36:23) the dominant figure in historical narrative, in the framework of legal corpora, in psalms of praise, lament or thanksgiving is none other than Yahweh, God of Israel.