The Uses of Legal History

Samuel J. Levine, Pepperdine University School of Law, has published “Lost in Translation: The Strange Journey of an Anti-Semitic Fabrication, from a Late Nineteenth Century American Russian Newspaper to an Irish Legal Journal to a Leading Twentieth Century American Criminal Law Textbook,” at 29 Dublin University Law Journal 260 (2007). Here is the abstract.

Levine introduces and explores an apocryphal and anti-Semitic story which originally appeared in an 1879 issue of the Russian Courier, a social and political newspaper published in Moscow. It was subsequently published in an 1882 issue of the Irish Law Times and later quoted in several editions of Albert J Harno’s Cases and Other Materials on Criminal Law and Procedure. The story allegedly occurred in Littowk on the Russian frontier. It involves a son who hires a peasant to kill his father. The peasant gets cold feet and tells the father of the plot. They go to the local rabbi, Joseph Beer, who suggests that they set up a trial for the son and have the father speak to him from beyond the grave. When the son hears his father’s voice, he is seized with terror and falls down dead. The Procurator of the province orders that the rabbi and all others involved be arrested. The rabbi in the story is identified as the prominent European scholar and communal leader, Joseph Baer Soloveitchik. Levine traces the evolution of the story into English through its unusual appearance in the Irish Law Times. Levine then examines the surprising and disconcerting presence of the story in successive editions of Harno’s textbook, published in 1933, 1939, 1950, and 1957. Levine concludes that, among other lessons, Harno’s publication of the story may serve as a cautionary tale, illustrating the potential perils of the increasing contemporary reliance upon sources, such as foreign materials and internet websites, that are often not readily susceptible to authentication and verification.

Download the article from SSRN here.