Judicial Discipline and Judicial Independence

The question of judicial accountability and independence arises primarily in the context of state courts. When it comes to accountability, it is state judges who must be concerned about threates to their independence

Les Paul at 91

Guitar legend Les Paul continues to perform to enthusiastic audiences as a nonagenarian whose age and impairments impact his playing technique. This essay describes the exemplary sociocultural relations that permit Paul, a person with disabilities largely a function of advanced age, to continue his career as a productive, respected, and affectionately esteemed member of a community

How Can We Sing a Song of the LORD on Alien Soil?: Disability, Disaster, and the Idea of Music in Judaism

An analysis of Psalm 137, a poetic chronicle of the Babylonian captivity following the destruction of the First Temple, Judaism’s paradigm of disaster, is poetically represented through images of music and disability. This Psalm’s influence on Jewish attitudes regarding music, which have served as a barometer of the Jewish people’s sense of their collective social welfare, is discussed. Of special importance is Abrams’ idea, derived from the Deutero-Isaiah, of the Jews, living in exile after the destruction of the Temple, as Israel disabled; an entire people’s calamity understood metaphorically as a single individual’s impairment. Particular attention is given to the discourse surrounding Late Renaissance Italian Jewish composer Salamone Rossi, who challenged the idea that the “disability” of exile required Jewish musical expression only to mourn the state of post-Temple Diaspora