9. On this issue, see CCAR Responsa Committee,“Privacy and the Disclosure of Personal Medical Information,” no. 5756.2(http://data.ccarnet.org/cgibin/respdisp.pl?file=2&year=5756), section 2.
XXii.
11. For an argument in support of the intellectual legitimacy of liberal halakhah (i.e., that liberal halakhah is no less“halakhic” than its Orthodox counterpart), see my“Against Method,” in Walter Jacob , ed., Beyond the Letter of the Law (Pittsburgh : Rodef Shalom Press, 2004), 17-77, in particular the final section, entitled“The Practice of Liberal Halakhah,” at 55ff. The article is available as well at http://huc.edu/faculty/faculty/washofsky.shtml.
13. United Nations Convention Against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment(1984); check and see Part One, Article One. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR ), http://193.194.138.190/html/menu3/b/h cat39.htm.
14. European Convention for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment(1987). For acomprehensive discussion see M. Evans and R. Morgan, Preventing Torture: A Study of the European Convention for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 61-105.
15. Rochin v. California, 345 U.S. 165(1952), at 172. In that case, police and physicians strapped a prisoner to a gurney, shoved a tube down his throat and forced him to vomit up some illegal pills he had swallowed. The pills served as evidence to secure his conviction, which was reversed by the Supreme Court .
16. The“dwarves standing on the shoulders of giants” proverb originates, in all probability, with the 12"-century scholastic philosopher Bernard of Chartres . The earliest use of the proverb by a Jewish writer is apparently found in a responsum by the 13"-century R. Yehoshua di Trani. On this, see Yisrael Ta-Shema, Halakhah , minhag umetzi'ut be ashkenaz 1100-1350(Jerusalem : Magnes), 1996, 70-76. The concept is part of a wider and deeper intellectual debate during the Middle Ages over the proper relationship between the rishonim and the acharonim— the Jewish version of the conflict between Antiqui et Moderni, the philosophical conflict over the authority of the past and the right of contemporary scholars to differ with their illustrious predecessors. For acomprehensive study of the expression of this dispute in Jewish literature, see Avraham Melamed, 4/ katfei‘anakim(Ramat Gan : Bar Ilan , 2003).