Prof. Jonathan Yovel

Dr. Yovel has acted as associate editor for the “Law and Language in the Public Sphere” project under the auspices of the American Bar Foundation (ABF) and continues to cooperate with Law & Social Inquiry. In Israel he is involved with civil rights issues and occasionally publishes op-ed, professional, and criticism articles in the daily press.

Chapters in Books

• Legal Formalism, Artificial Intelligence and the Indeterminacy of Relevance, in Ephraim Nissan, Computer Applications for Handling Legal Evidence, Police Investigation and Case Argumentation (Forthcoming) (2012)
• A Handbook on Israeli Commercial Law,  with Joseph Edrey, in The International Contract Manual 315-351 (New York: West Publications) (2008)
• The Seller’s Right to Avoid the Contract in International Sales, in an International Approach to the Interpretation of the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods, 440-456 , (John Felemegas ed., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) (2007)
• Current-Price and Market-Based Damages for Breach of Contract in International Sales, in an International Approach to the Interpretation of the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods, 480-486 , (John Felemegas ed., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) (2007)
• The Buyer’s Right to Avoid the Contract in International Sales, in an International Approach to the Interpretation of the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods, 397-410 , (John Felemegas ed., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) (2007)
• Gay Science as Law: An Outline for a Nietzschean Jurisprudence,  in Half-Written Laws: Nietzsche and Legal Theory 23-49, (Peter Goodrich and Mariana Velvedere eds., London: Routledge) (expanded and revised version of a law review article published in 2003) (2005)
• The Role of Social Science in Legal Decisions, with Elizabeth Mertz, The Companion to Law and Society, 410-431 , (Austin Sarat ed., Oxford: Blackwell) (2004)
• “Gay Science” as Law: An Outline for a Nietzschean Jurisprudence, 24 Cardozo Law Review 635-662 (2003)
• Metalinguistic Awareness,  with Elizabeth Mertz, The Handbook of Pragmatics 1-26 , (J. Verschueren, J-O Östman, J. Blommaert & C. Bulcaen, eds., Amsterdam: Benjamins) (2000)
• The Contingency of Transitivity: a Formal Outline for a Quantitative Approach to a Puzzle of Analogical Reasoning  The Logic of Norms 153-172, (Antonio. A. Martino ed., Pisa: SEU) (1998)

Articles

• The Creation of Language and Language without Time: Metaphysics and Metapragmatics in Genesis 1, 20 Biblical Interpretation (2012)
• Relational Formalism and the Construction of Financial Instruments, American Business Law Journal 371-407 (2011)
• Legal Formalism, Institutional Norms and the Morality of Basketball, 8 Virginia Journal of Law, Sports and Entertainment 33-70 (2008)
• Quasi-Checks: An Apology for a Mutation of Negotiable Instruments, 5 Depaul Journal of Business and Commercial Law 579-603 (2007)
• How Can a Crime be Against Humanity? Philosophical Doubts Concerning a Useful Concept, 11 UCLA Journal of International Law and Foreign Affairs 39-58 (2007)
• Le Droit du Plus Fort: Law as Metaphor and Morality in Milton’s Samson Agonistes, 2 Journal of Law, Culture and the Humanities 440-469 (2006)
• The Seller’s Right to Cure a Failure to Perform in International Sales, Nordic Journal of Commercial Law 1-19 (2005)
• Running backs, Wolves, and Other Fatalities: How Manipulations of Narrative Coherence in Legal Opinions Marginalize Violent Death, 16 Law and Literature 127-159 (2004)
• Two Conceptions of Relevance, 34 Cybernetics and Systems: Formal approaches to Legal Evidence, 283-315 (2003)
• Rights and Rites: Initiation, Language and Performance in Law and Legal Education” Comment by Elizabeth Mertz, 3 Stanford Agora 1-31 (formerly the Stanford Journal of Legal Studies) (2002)
• In the Beginning Was the Word: Paradigms of Language and Normativity in Law, Philosophy, and Theology, 5 Mountbatten Journal of Legal Studies 5-33 (2001)
• Invisible Precedents: On the Many Lives of Legal Stories Through Law and Popular Culture, 50 Emory Law Journal 1265-1293 (2001)
• “Metalinguistic Awareness”  with Elizabeth Mertz, The Handbook of Pragmatics 1-26 (Verschueren et al., eds., Amsterdam: Benjamins (2000)
• What is Contract Law “About”? Speech Act Theory and a Critique of “Skeletal Promises”, 94 Northwestern University Law Review 937-962 (2000)
• Analogical Reasoning as Translation: The Pragmatics of Transitivity, 13 International Journal for the Semiotics of law 1-27 (2000)
• The Contingency of Transitivity: A Formal Outline for a Quantitative Approach to a Puzzle of Analogical Reasoning, in Antonio A. Martino, The Logic Of Norms Pisa: SEU pp. 153-172 (1998)
• “Overruling Rules?”, 4(2) Pragmatics & Cognition 347-366 (1996)

Other

• “Courtroom Narrative”  with Elizabeth Mertz, The Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory (London: Routledge) (2004)
• Imagining Territories: Space, Place, and the Anticity, University of Haifa Faculty of Law Legal Studies Research Paper (2007)
• Discourse Ethics and Interpretative Manipulations from Akhnai’s Oven, Posen Center Research Publication 4 (2006)

• S.J.D. (1997, Northwestern)
• LL.M with honors (1995, Northwestern)
• LL.B., B.A. (philosophy) magna cum laude (Tel-Aviv, 1992)
• Oxford University, 1990 (no degree taken)

• 2001-2: Visiting Assistant Professor, The Center for Law, Language, and Cognition, Brooklyn Law school, New York
• Spring 2001: Visiting Scholar, Max Plank Institute for Comparative and Public International Law, Heidelberg, Germany
• Summer 2000: American University Washington College of Law Summer Program (Haifa)
• Fall 2000: Visiting Professor, Nova University Law Center
• Fall 1998: Visiting Scholar, Fordham University School of Law
• 1999-2000: Observer, UNCITRAL working group on Electronic Commerce (NYC and Vienna)
• 1991-4: Articled clerk, Zadok and Assoc., Tel-Aviv (commercial practice); then Judicial Clerk, Hon. Miriam Naor, Judge, District court of Jerusalem and President of the Israel Antitrust Court; then in Private practice, incl. legal counsel to the Press Council and various NGOs, civil and constitutional litigation in military courts, district courts, and High Court.

Further Information

Research Grants and fellowships:

2000-2002

Israel Science Foundation Grant

Social Stratification and Cultures of Argumentation of Lay Litigants in the Place of Justice

(renewed)

2000-2001

Israel Foundation Trustees Grant (formerly the Israel Ford Foundation)

Language and the Politics of Argumentation in Small Claims Courts

2000

Israel Research Foundation Technological Infrastructure Grant

1999

– Research Prize, University of Haifa Research Authority

– Grant for the Development of Online Teaching, University of Haifa

1996-1997

Pritzker Doctoral Fellowship, Northwestern University School of Law

1994-1996

MacChesney Grant, Northwestern University School of Law (renewed twice) Sundry Grant, Northwestern University School of Law (renewed twice)

***

Forthcoming Book: Sus Troyani [Trojan Horse], Tel Aviv: Hakibutz hameuhad, 2003 (in Hebrew)

Short Stories

• These are the Names, First Prize, Ha’aretz Short Story Competition, 2000
• Ishmael, Ha’aretz, July 2000
• Death in Three Movements, Yediot Aharonot, October 1997
• The Golem, Ha’aretz, April 1996
• Earthquake, First Prize, Ha’aretz Short Story Competition 1996

Translations (into Hebrew)

• Verse translation of selections from Milton’s Samson Agonistes (in preparation)
• Occasional translations from Franחois Villon, Joachim du Belley, “minor” French renaissance poets, Georges Brassens, Jacques Brel, Ezra Pound and Flann O’Brian.
• Selective translation from Aquinas, Treaties on Law (Summa Theologica FPSP QQ 90-107) (in preparation)

Op-eds

1996-present, covering various legal, political and social issues in Haaretz and Yediot Aharonot, including: human rights issues; Mideast peace process; rhetorical analyses of various aspects of public discourse; critiques of the use of private-law standards in government-citizen relationships; newly-emerging consumerist and civic ideologies; and analyses and critique of various governmental bodies including the supreme Court, constitutional court, the presidency, the military, etc.

Literary and Professional Essays and Reviews

Several pieces in Haaretz Literary Supplement, Haaretz Sfarim (Haaretz Book Review), and Yediot Aharonot, including pieces on Mimetic prose, Kafka’s novels The Trial and Amerika, Peter Hoeg, the duty to obey the law, legal jargon and legal lexicons.

• In his dissertation, The language beyond law: linguistic performativity in legal context, written with joint supervision of the law school and dept. of philosophy at Northwestern and the dept. of linguistics at the University of Chicago, Yovel develops an intersubjective theory of preformative language, subsequently used for a critical examination of competing models of contract formation, with special emphases on “relational” contract theory. He now applies some of that analysis to a relational theory of contractual remedies and continues an elaboration of a social, non-cognitivist approach to performative language.