Judaism and American Law -- Part 9

Our fifth and final passage addresses the substantive area of property law. Often the visual image of a bundle of sticks is used by legal commentators to describe the rights through which property law operates. These include the right of ownership, the right of possession, the right of use and the right of transfer, lease or sale, to name just a few. In Torah we have the foundations for two essential property rights – the right of redemption and the right of reversion. In Leviticus 25:23, God commands:

The land must not be sold beyond reclaim, for the land is Mine; you are but strangers resident with Me. Throughout the land that you hold, you must provide for the redemption of the land.

This passage then goes on to detail the provisions through which a member of the community is enabled to redeem property that had to be sold due to the initial owner’s financial straits. These provisions extend, in certain cases, to provide the return of the property even if the person is not financially able to exercise his right of redemption directly or indirectly through a near relative. In verse 28, we read:

If he lacks sufficient means to recover it, what he sold shall remain with the purchaser until the jubilee; in the jubilee year it shall be released, and he shall return to his holding.

Rights of redemption of real property are expressly provided for in modern American law through provisions in Deeds of Trust where the borrower on a home loan is given the right to redeem the title to her property for a limited period of time even after default and foreclosure. Rights of reversion are frequently made a part of the transfer of title to property when the ownership interest transferred is limited to the life span of the person to whom the transfer is made or when it is conditioned upon a particular specified use. In both cases, the foundational idea for these property rights stems from the provisions of Leviticus 25.

In each of the foregoing areas of law we may trace foundational ideas back to Torah: Subject matter jurisdiction in dispute resolution; the essential nature of order in criminal law; duty in tort; promise in contract and rights in property law. These five are but a few examples of how the Jewish idea of justice is worked out in practice as both an affirmation of the dignity of every human being since all are created in the image of God, and an accommodation for the finitude and fallen state of humans and how that essential idea provides foundations for aspects of our American legal system.