ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

THE WHEEL OF LAW has taken me many places. At each stop along the way, I encountered generous people who gave direction to an ultimately long and fascinating intellectual journey. Ten years ago, after completing a comparative study of Israeli and American constitutionalism, I turned my sights to India, a country whose unique experience with democracy had always intrigued me but never been my scholarly focus. Confronting the complexity of that country and its constitutional culture was a daunting prospect, which only heightened my appreciation for the advice and assistance I received while developing this book.

A year’s residence at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars was the ideal setting to begin developing many of the thoughts that have found a place in these pages. The Center’s staff provided a wonderful environment to encourage the best from its invitees. To perfectly complement this year of splendid isolation (gratefully shared, to be sure, with stimulating colleagues), a Fulbright research fellowship to India allowed me to discover, in the only way one truly can, the disjunction between ideas that looked so promising on paper and the facts on the ground. I am particularly indebted to Rajni Nair of the Fulbright staff in India, who was committed to making my stay in New Delhi as productive as possible. While in India, I had positive affiliations with Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and the Delhi University Law Faculty. JNU’s Rajeev Bhargava, Zoya Hasan, and Gurpreet Mahajan were especially helpful in honing my understanding of the Indian political scene. Venkatesh Prasad, a graduate of the law school at Delhi University, was an exemplary research assistant, whose knowledge of the law and passion for its elucidation proved invaluable to me. I am also very grateful for the assistance given me by Gowher Rizvi, head of the Ford Foundation in India, who unsparingly placed the resources of his institution at my disposal.

Gratitude, too, should be extended to those in India, the United States, Israel, and Canada who invited me to present my work at forums whose members invariably offered valuable feedback. The South Asia Seminar at Harvard University and its organizers, Pratap Mehta, Ashutosh Varshney, and Divesh Kapur, deserve special recognition for having asked me to discuss my ideas with them on three separate occasions. These visits gave me hope that I might have something useful to say to an audience possessing vastly more knowledge of my general subject matter than I.

Special thanks to Paul Brass, whose intimate knowledge of Indian politics justified the skepticism in his initial reaction to my project, but whose eventual advice and encouragement were all the more appreciated because it did not come easily. Amelie Rorty, Mark Graber, Mark Tushnet, Russ Muirhead, and Michael MacDonald contributed sharp insights and suggestions in response to different parts of the book. And three Williams College students—Hilary Barraford, Nishant Nayyar, and Andrew Woolf—provided superb assistance in preparing the manuscript. They affirmed for me why teaching at Williams is such a privilege, demonstrating in different ways that learning between student and professor need not be unidirectional.

My deepest gratitude, as always, goes to the Jacobsohn family—to my wife, Beth, and children, Joseph, Matthew, and Vanessa—whose support extended halfway around the world to a place where they had not asked to go. My greatest satisfaction lies not in the fact that they went, but that they are all the better for having done so.

A revised version of some of the material in chapters 2 and 3 appeared in “Three Models of Secular Constitutional Development: India, Israel, and the United States,” 10 Studies in American Political Development 1 (1996). A section in chapter 8 appeared in an article, “After the Revolution,” Israel Law Review (2000). Much of chapter 6 appeared in an essay, “ ‘By the Light of Reason’: Corruption, Religious Speech, and Constitutional Essentials,” in Nancy Rosenblum, ed., Obligations of Citizenship and Demands of Faith: Religious Accommodation in Pluralist Democracies (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000). Permission to incorporate this material is gratefully acknowledged.