No academic cachet is more prized by America’s legal world than a Harvard Law degree. So it is hard to conceive that anyone who made it through Harvard’s rigorous training could object to a governmentally imposed standard prescribing the minimum number of hours that English must be taught to primary and high-school children? Yet dozens of Harvard Law School graduates — including me — have signed a formal objection to New York State’s proposed regulations that would direct all the state’s private schools, including Jewish religious day schools (“yeshivas”), to commit minimum hours to teaching subjects “substantially equivalent” to those taught in public schools.

The signers are all Harvard Law School alumni who spent their elementary, middle, and high-school years studying at yeshivas that maintained curricula emphasizing Judaic studies. Their yeshivas devoted many hours each day to intensive Biblical and Talmudic courses. These were customarily followed by instruction in math, science, social studies, a foreign language, and English language and literature. Many of the signers also participated extensively in extracurricular activities such as student government, journalism, and science fairs and projects.

All now say that while the yeshivas’ secular studies departments were essential to their educational development, the Jewish studies courses shaped their identities. Their religious studies developed critical thinking skills and academic rigor that helped them succeed in law school. They are writing a formal petition to the Board of Regents that they continue to draw on their yeshiva roots as attorneys at the nation’s top law firms and as officers of leading corporations. Many have chosen to enroll their school-aged children in yeshiva day schools similar to those that the parents attended.

The vast majority of these schools exceed the “substantial equivalence” standard prescribed by Section 3204 of New York’s Education Law. Students’ scores on Regents exams and other standardized tests prove the quality of the yeshivas’ secular education. Nonetheless, the signers believe that government officials should not dictate the coursework and hourly units taught at non-public schools with the specificity provided in the Board’s proposed regulations. Rather than measuring units of time for specific subjects, metrics should be primarily tied to quality of output.

Arbiters of equivalence, moreover, should surely not be local public school district personnel. They compete with private schools for student enrollment. There are school districts where tensions already exist between religious communities and local school boards. The proposed procedures would exacerbate political combat, harming all parties and undermining the stated goal of improving children’s education. A preferable solution is self-regulation or the creation of an impartial third-party accreditation organization. It could fairly police institutions to determine qualitative adequacy.

Most dangerous of all in the proposed regulations are the enforcement provisions. If a school’s curriculum is found not “substantially equivalent,” its students are legally deemed truant. This threatens family court and child protective services proceedings against parents who believe in good faith that religious observance limits the choice of a school for their children. Communal cooperation and harmonious engagement are needed to effectively remedy current deficiencies. The proposed regulations will, instead, produce acrimony between religious communities and government.

New York’s education officials apparently overlook the benefits that colleges and professional schools like Harvard’s Law School derive from the diversity of its students. The educational profiles and unique perspectives produced by alumni of yeshivas — whether progressively modern or strictly traditional — contribute qualitatively to the education of their fellow students. Hence so many Harvard Law School graduates oppose the Regents’ proposed regulations. The Harvard alumni are telling the government that the regulations would cripple their freedom to choose how to educate their children and would disrupt their community’s way of life.

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Mr. Lewin, a member of the adjunct faculty of Columbia Law School, has argued 28 cases before the United States Supreme Court.