Acknowledgments

I began writing this book in 2018 and completed it during the anni horribiles of 2023–25. These three years were marked in Israel by the government’s attempt to overhaul the judicial system, and later by the war sparked by Hamas’ barbaric assault on Israel on October 7, 2023. During these difficult times, history offered a source of solace, reminding me that the dark present was not the only possibility, that there had been, and perhaps could be again, a time when religion was a source of shared hope and promise rather than of division and hatred. No less sustaining than history was the remarkable community of legal historians at Tel Aviv University and, more broadly, throughout Israel. I am grateful to Orna Alyagon-Darr, Leora Bilsky, Michael Birnhack, Ofra Bloch, Rivka Brot, Levy Cooper, Natalie Davidson, Talia Diskin, Arye Edrei, Rachel Friedman, Mary Haddad, Ron Harris, Roy Kreitner, Nomi Levenkron, Doreen Lustig, Maya Mark, Menny Mautner, Tamara Morsel-Eisenberg, Dina Moyal, Udi Neuman, Amihai Radzyner, Anat Rosenberg, Orit Rozin, Shani Schnitzer, David Schorr, Yoram Shachar, Ornit Shani, Rivi Weill, Melech Westreich, Shai Wozner, Neta Ziv, and many other friends and colleagues for their advice, assistance, comments, and camaraderie.

While working on this book, I was fortunate to spend short research leaves at two of Europe’s leading legal history research institutes: the Centre Aquitain d’Histoire du Droit at the University of Bordeaux and the Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory in Frankfurt. I would like to thank Nader Hakim, as well as Géraldine Cazals, Laetitia Guerlain, and Xavier Prévost in Bordeaux and Thomas Duve, Stefan Vogenauer, and Marietta Auer, as well as Ulrike Radden, in Frankfurt, for their warm hospitality and for the opportunity to present and discuss parts of this book during my time at their respective institutions.

For advice and feedback on drafts of some of the chapters of this book and other types of assistance I also thank Aya Bejermi, Yishai Blank, Tatiana Borisova, Luisa Brunori, William E. Butler, Li Chen, Raymond Cocks, Avihay Dorfman, Baudouin Dupret, Miriam Egbor, Magdalena Gebhart, Nishant Gokhale, Khinvraj Jangid, Oleksiy Kresin, Mitchel Lasser, James Loeffler, Nariaki Nakazato, Teemu Ruskola, Lena Salaymeh, Philippa Shimrat, Upasana Singh, Geetanjali Srikantan, Verena Steller, Shivprasad Swaminathan, Ragini Surana, Jin Wang, Zhiqiang Wang, and Mingzhe Zhu.

I am grateful for the feedback I received on earlier drafts of several chapters of this book when I presented them at Ben-Gurion University, the China University of Political Science and Law, Cornell University, the University of Haifa, the Israel Institute for Advanced Studies, Reichman University, Queen Mary University of London, and the Swiss Institute of Comparative Law, as well as at conferences of the American Society of Comparative Law, the American Society for Legal History, the Asian Legal History Association, the Australian and New Zealand Law and History Society, the European Society for Comparative Legal History, the Israeli Legal History Association, the British Legal History Conference, the Legal Histories of Empire Conference, and the TAU-Jindal Global University Conference.

My research assistants made the work on this book easier. I thank Reut Babai, Ido Ben Meir, Tamar Ben Ozer, Amit Berkovitz, Tanvi Bhargava, Neta Chehanovski, Katarzyna Czerwonogóra, Yoni Filc, Udita Ghosh, Nir Gonen, Matan Harel, Hazar Hasan, Ella Itkin, Julija Levin, Anna Lotan, Lama Obaid Zoabi, Diklah Shambadal, Rajbushan Shinde, and Noa Shmueli. I thank the staff at the libraries and archives I used, especially Lev Beingoltz, Niklaus Bütikofer, Giora Katz, Orly Levi, Hana Liashkevich, and Eran Tal. Special thanks are due to Amanda Dale for her excellent editorial work. Research for this book was supported by The Israel Science Foundation (grant nos. 405/15 and 1377/21), and The David Berg Foundation Institute for Law and History at Tel Aviv University.

Funding from Tel Aviv University and the Danielle Rubinstein Chair in Comparative Law and Jurisprudence, along with the assistance of Yossi Bar, Sharon Konforty, Liora Smurjik Cohen, and Eyal Zisser, made it possible for this book to be published open access, allowing the digital version to be freely read and reused under a Creative Commons license.

I am indebted to the American Society of Comparative Law and to Oxford University Press for their permission to use materials from my articles “A Colonial Legal Laboratory? Jurisprudential Innovation in British India,” American Journal of Comparative Law 69 (2021): 44–91, and “Jurisprudence and Nationalism in the British Empire in the Early Twentieth Century: India, Egypt, and Palestine Compared,” English Historical Review (forthcoming), in this book.

Working with Taisu Zhang, the book’s academic editor, was a privilege. His steady guidance and expertise shaped every stage of the publication process, from submission to publication. The perceptive comments of the two anonymous reviewers substantially enriched the book’s arguments. I thank Ruth Boyes, Cecelia Cancellaro, Victoria Phillips, and the rest of the editorial team at Cambridge University Press, for their valuable support throughout the publication process. At Integra Software Services I thank Sindhu Balasubramanian. Finally, I thank Sophie Rosinke for copy-editing this book, and Arc Indexing for the preparation of the index.

I am deeply grateful for the support of my extended family: my siblings Edo and Michal, and their partners, Sigale and Ben, as well as Amnon, Ahuva, Efrat, Gadi, Iris, and Elad. I am also thankful for the opportunity to have known the late Michal Wydra-Dangor, may her memory be a blessing. My children – Yotam, Hagar, and Daniel – and their partners, Carmel and Lior, bring immense joy and meaning to my life. Above all, I am profoundly thankful to my wife, Orly Erez-Likhovski, for her unwavering strength, wisdom, and love. She is, in every sense, a true woman of valor.