Organ Donation and the Divine Lien in Talmudic Law
Checking Availibility...Description
This book offers a new theory of property and distributive justice derived from Talmudic law, illustrated by a case study involving the sale of organs for transplant. Although organ donation did not exist in late antiquity, this book posits a new way, drawn from the Talmud, to conceive of this modern means of giving to others. Our common understanding of organ transfers as either a gift or sale is trapped in a dichotomy that is conceptually and philosophically limiting. Drawing on Maussian gift theory, this book suggests a different legal and cultural meaning for this property transfer. It introduces the concept of the "divine lien," an obligation to others in need built into the definition of all property ownership. Rather than a gift or sale, organ transfer is shown to exemplify an owner's voluntary recognition and fulfillment of this latent property obligation.
About this Author
Madeline Kochen, a former Law Professor at the University of Michigan, is a public interest lawyer and a Talmudic scholar, with a PhD in religion and political philosophy from Harvard University, Massachusetts. After representing indigent defendants on appeal at the Legal Aid Society, she worked as an attorney for the New York Civil Liberties Union, where she eventually founded and directed the NYCLU Reproductive Rights Project. Kochen has also taught at Harvard and at Stanford Law School, where she was an Assistant Dean. Her publications have appeared in Aramaic Studies in Judaism and Early Christianity, The Encyclopedia of the Bible and its Reception, the New York Law Journal and the Jewish Law Association Studies. Kochen has also served as a board member at the Michigan and Arizona ACLUs.
If the product is in stock at the store nearest you, we suggest you call ahead to have it set aside for you, or you may place an order online and choose in-store pickup.
