Search Results

Chapter 2 examines the context in which the discussions about religious leadership and the authority of the Chief Rabbi took place in pre-World War I Britain. Centre stage is taken by the Conference of Anglo-Jewish Ministers which at their first two meetings in 1909 and 1911 suggested a radical overhaul of the authority structure of the United Hebrew Congregations of the British Empire, proposing the devolution of religious authority to regional batei din. The death of Hermann Adler in 1911 and the election of Joseph Hertz as his successor as Chief Rabbi in 1913 changed the course of events, and the scheme was dropped from discussions. However, the scheme remained prominent in Salis Daiches’s mind and he pursued it actively in Scotland from 1919 onwards. While his religious politics ran counter to that of Chief Rabbi Hertz, his voice had traction in the communities he served. Though futile in the end, the repeated articulation of a plan of decentralisation of rabbinic authority is a helpful barometer for the mood in Jewish congregations in the early twentieth century whose long-term members were massively outnumbered by recently immigrated co-religionists.

The chapter examines the notion that personal rather than territorial law prevailed in medieval Islam and discusses the tension between communal autonomy and governmental interference. The meaning and the limits of the so-called ‘dhimmi judicial autonomy’ are also discussed.

Basic frameworks for successful religious arbitration exist, though religious communities, particularly the growing American Muslim community, still face challenges in implementing their own ADR systems effectively. This chapter describes some of these challenges, as well as the ways in which they may be addressed. It looks to the example set by the Muslim Arbitration Tribunal, a U.K.-based Islamic arbitration organization that has successfully adopted and adapted the Beth Din of America approach to religious arbitration, as a likely model for American Muslims to build on in constructing their own ADR processes. This chapter notes that Christian communities in the United States also face challenges in their attempts to implement effective faith-based arbitration, though these challenges somewhat differ from those dealt with by the more law-centered Jewish and Muslim traditions. Christian communities have responded by creating their own religious arbitration models that conform to the technical legal requirements of the FAA.