Chaim Saiman

Professor of Law
Chair in Jewish Law

Biography

Chaim Saiman is a scholar of Jewish law, insurance law and private law and published Halakhah: The Rabbinic Idea of Law with Princeton University Press. Saiman has served as the Gruss Visiting Professor of Talmudic Law at both Harvard Law School and the University of Pennsylvania Law School, a visiting fellow at Princeton University and a visiting professor at the University of Toronto, Bar-Ilan, Hebrew University, IDC and Pepperdine University faculties of law. Saiman sits as a rabbinical court judge (dayyan) with the Beth Din of America and serves as an expert witness in insurance law and Jewish law in federal court.

Saiman received his BS from Georgia State University and his JD from Columbia University School of Law. He also studied for a number of years at Yeshivat Har-Etzion (Gush) and Yeshivat Kerem B’Yavneh in Israel. Prior to joining the faculty at Villanova, he was an Olin Fellow at Harvard Law School a Golieb Fellow at NYU Law School, a law clerk to Judge Michael McConnell on the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals and worked as a corporate associate with the firm Cleary Gottlieb in New York. At Villanova, Saiman teaches contracts, insurance law, insurance coverage disputes, Jewish law and arbitration.

 

Practice Experience

  • Judicial Clerk to Michael McConnell, United States Court of Appeals (10th Circuit)
  • Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen and Hamilton (New York)
  • Joined the faculty in 2006

Recent Publications

  • Arbitration and the Rise of the Neo-Kahal (forthcoming), Book Chapter, Scholarly, New , February 2025

  • Legal Fictions in Jewish Law (forthcoming) , Book Review, Horeb: Studies in Rabbinic Culture , January 2025

  • The Authority of the Shulhan Arukh: A Case Study in the Halakhic Development of the Laws of Triage (forthcoming), Article, Submitted, October 2024

  • Joinder and Necessary Parties, Article, Journal of the Beth Din of America, July (3rd Quarter/Summer) 2024

  • Formalism in Jewish Law, Book Chapter, Oxford U. Press, July (3rd Quarter/Summer) 2024

Recent Presentations

  • 'Insurance Law Center', Is Insurance a "Just Contract" or "Just a Contract", U. Conn Law School, December 2025

  • 'Orthodox Union Lawyer's Conference', Beth Dins and Civil Courts , Orthodox Union, Ft. Lauderdale, FL. February 2025

  • How do Beth Din's in America Function?, Hebrew University-- Havruta Program, Jerusalem, Israel. January 2025

  • 'Haredi Research Group', Arbitrating Pluralism, online. October 2024

  • 'Center for Political Theology', Respondent to "Yeshayahu Leibowitz and the Production of Disinterested Judaism", Villanova U, September 2024

Office: Rm 339, John F. Scarpa Hall
Phone: 610-519-3296

Courses and Seminars

  • Advanced Insurance Seminar
  • Abitration: Law, Policy, and Procedure
  • Commercial and Religious Arbitration
  • Contracts
  • Insurance Law
  • Jewish Law Seminar
  • Legislation

Education

  • Columbia University School of Law, JD
  • Georgia State University, BA
  • Yeshivat Har Etzion
  • Yeshivat Kerem B’Yavne