A new book display is on view in the Foreign & International Reading Room on L1, prepared by Steven A Mitchell, the Research and Instructional Law Librarian. The display highlights selections from the Lillian Goldman Law Library’s collection that cover the interactions of law and religion, as well as different traditions of religious law itself.
Alongside law, religion has been an abiding, fundamental element of human civilization. From the advent of writing across the globe, we find the memorialization in text of both law and religion, regulating conduct and guiding morality in the community. At different locations and times, the relationship between these two areas of life, and of scholarship, has been various: nearly indistinct, inextricably intertwined, implicating and influencing each other, or individuated as separate disciplines entirely. The books present recent scholarship on the operation of law within religious practices, both ancient and contemporary, as well as the continued mutual exchange of legal ideas between religious and political traditions and institutions.
Many of the titles on display are from the KB or B ranges of call numbers; more volumes on these topics can be found in the Library's Lower East Side and the Main Reading Room, respectively. A full list of titles, as well as a quick reference for locating other titles on these topics, is available below and in physical form next to the display.
