Money and Judges: Contours of Judicial Bribery in Medieval Jewish and Canon Law
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Authors
Pill, Shlomo
Issue Date
2017-01
Volume
8
Issue
1
Type
Journal Article
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Abstract
INTRODUCTION
Judicial ethics is a central concern of all legal systems. The law owes its viability to the courts that apply and enforce it, and the efficacy of the courts depends on people’s willingness to submit their disputes to them and accept their rulings. Judicial ethics laws aim to engender public confidence in the courts by assuring litigants that their disputes will be resolved by judges with professionalism, erudition, and integrity. During the middle ages, bribery was one of the main focuses of judicial ethics in both Jewish and Canon law. These systems in particular relied on the good will of their adherents for their own viability, and each took measures to earn that trust by trying to curtail the impression of judicial corruption that results from jurists taking money from the litigants they are judging.|This paper explores the Jewish and Canon law prohibitions on judicial bribery during the medieval period. In discussing the halakhic, or Jewish law, doctrine, this paper draws on the Talmud, as well as rabbinic scholarship such as codifications and restatements of the law, and responsa dating from the 10th century until the mid-16th century. In presenting the Canon law approach to judicial bribery, this paper relies principally on two articles written by Richard Helmholz in which the author surveyed and explicated various aspects of medieval Canon law judicial ethics.|Part II of this paper explores the theoretical underpinnings that animated the rules governing judicial bribery in Canon and Jewish law during the Middle Ages. Part III next considers the substance of the Jewish and Canon law doctrines, focusing on how scholars within each system distinguished between permitted and prohibited payments to judges in order to leave open adequate avenues for judges to earn a living from their work. Finally, Part IV briefly discusses some of the procedural implications of a judge’s taking a bribe in Jewish and Canon law, including a bribed judge’s obligation to recuse himself from a case, and the legal effect of rulings he issued in violation of this duty.
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Publisher
Creighton University School of Law
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