legal and academic writing
by jay michaelson



Jay Michaelson holds a J.D. from Yale Law School and is currently pursuing his Ph.D. in Jewish Thought at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he is writing on the antinomian theology of Jacob Frank. He has been an adjunct faculty member of City College, and a visiting professor at Yale University, as well as a presenter at numerous academic conferences. He is a former Golieb fellow in Legal History at NYU law school; Olin Fellow in Law, Economics and Public Policy at Yale; clerk to Judge Merrick Garland of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit; and senior editor of the Yale Law Journal. He is also the vice president and general counsel for Wasabi Systems, an open source software company which Jay co-founded in 2000, and has spoken at numerous trade and industry gatherings regarding open source software and intellectual property.

Jay holds an M.A. in Religious Studies from Hebrew University, where his thesis under the supervision of Prof. Daniel Boyarin was awarded the grade of 100. Fellowships and prizes Jay has received include the Dorot Fellowship, the Weinig Traveling Fellowship, and, at Yale Law School, the Ambrose Gherini Prize, and the Israel Peres Prize (for the best Note in Yale Law Journal).

Scholarly publications include:

Legal academic writing

In Praise of the Pound of Flesh: Legalism, Multiculturalism, and the Problem of the Soul Article analyzing rhetoric of legalism, and defending "counter-intuitive" formal legalism as better withstanding the critiques of multiculturalism and postmodern epistemology than "common-sense" rulemaking and legal theory.
6 Journal of Law in Society 98 (2005)

On Listening to the Kulturkampf: How America Overruled Bowers v. Hardwick, even though Romer v. Evans didn't
Essay (which prefigured the analysis in Lawrence v. Texas by three years) on the interplay between changes societal norms, in this case regarding homosexuality and family, and substantive due process.
49 Duke L.J. 1559 (2000)

Geoengineering: A Climate Change Manhattan Project
Article analyzing the reasons for and against artificial manipulation of the Earth's climate, in light of the failure of global climate change mitigation treaties.
17 Stan. Envtl. L. J. 73 (1998)

Rethinking Regulatory Reform: Toxics, Politics, and Ethics
Note discussing the ethical and practical problems of cost-benefit analysis in environmental regulation.
105 Yale L.J. 1891 (1996)

Why We Hate Lawyers: Legalism, Judaism, and the Secret History of the Soul
Why We Hate Lawyers, the fruit of five years of research in law and religion, uncovers for the first time the reason why Americans do not, have not, and never will like lawyers: because what ordinary Americans are saying today about the secular law replicates deep religious concerns -- in fact, they mirror what Paul said about the Jews two thousand years ago. The link above takes you to the introduction to the book.

Other academic writing

I'm Just Not that Kind of God: Queering Kabbalistic Gender Play
In forthcoming anthology on Judaism and sexuality from NYU Press. Article applies methodologies of queer theory to Kabbalistic conceptions of gender dimorphism, critiquing Wolfson's theory of Kabbalistic gender play and offering a Lacanian analysis of "inscribing the female within the male." (Not yet published; forthcoming late 2007)

Researching Judaism Online: Paths through the Minefield
Religious Studies Review, October 2006

Non-academic writing on law

Two Lawyers, Three Opinions
Forward, Nov. 3, 2006

Book Review, You Are, Therefore I Am
On Emmanuel Levinas;Forward, July 28, 2006

A Jew and a Lawyer Are Sitting in a Bar...
The deeper meaning of lawyer jokes
Forward, March 3, 2006

Closed-Source Loadable Kernel Modules Violate the GPL
White paper analyzing the dubious status of "loadable kernel modules" under the intellectual property provisions of Linux's GPL license and the Copyright Act.
February 21, 2006 (with Christopher Holst)

When GPL Violations are Sarbanes-Oxley Violations
White paper on securities law issues raised by violations of Linux' open source license known as the General Public License, or GPL.
January 17, 2006 (with Christopher Holst)

There's No Such Thing as a Free (Software) Lunch
Industry publication article regarding open source licensing and intellectual property.
ACM Queue, May 2004







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