I am most honoured to have been asked to deliver this lecture in the series of the Lionel Cohen Lectures in this University. During the years I practised as an advocate I had the privilege and advantage of appearing in London on more than one occasion before a board of the Judicial Committee of Her Majesty's Privy Council of which Lord Cohen was a member. May I respectfully say that in the argument of cases before him I came to appreciate his knowledge of the law and the perceptiveness of his mind in the resolution of complex legal problems. I always appreciated his unfailing courtesy and patience with counsel even when perforce counsel in the course of duty had to put what his Lordship thought was a bad and even an untenable argument. Also, I came to know him personally and joined the wide circle of his friends. I am very delighted to be now participating in a public acknowledgement of Lord Cohen as a jurist and as a man.

The current year—5730, by the Jewish calendar—was “election year”, and now that the great event has passed and a new Knesset—“the Seventh”—been elected, it may be opportune to give a brief description of our system of parliamentary elections, to consider some of its problems and to see what lessons can be learned.

Knesset elections are governed, primarily, by the provisions of the Basic Law: The Knesset. Under this Law, elections are to be held once every four years. Earlier elections—e.g. when there is no majority to support a government—require special legislation. Elections are general, countrywide, direct, equal, secret and proportional. Detailed provisions are set out in the Knesset Elections Law, 1969. Under this Law, votes are cast for lists of candidates filed by the various competing parties not later than 35 days before the elections. In the final count, the whole country constitutes one election district; all votes are added up and taken into account. However, lists must attract at least one percent of the total of valid votes cast at the elections in order to participate in the division of the Knesset's 120 seats. Such division is effected, first, by dividing the total of valid votes cast for such qualifying lists by 120; then, by allotting each such list as many seats as are arrived at by dividing the total of valid votes cast for it by the quotient so obtained; and finally, by allocating any remaining seats to such lists, one to each respectively, as are left, after such division, with the largest remainders of votes.

Penology, or the science of punishment, has three different aspects: the technique of punishment, or the character of the various punitive measures and the means by which they are enforced and implemented; the psychology of punishment, probing into the function of punitive action, both in so far as the victim, that is the person punished, is affected, and in so far as such action is calculated to satisfy the needs or purposes of the punishing authority; and the sociology of punishment allocating to penal activity its place (as part of the legal institutional framework) in the social, economic and political life of the community. All these aspects are interconnected, and the view generally advocated (though hardly proven as yet) is that they are also interdependent: the psychological effect as well as the sociological impact of any given penalty depends, it is held, on the nature of the penalty concerned and the manner in which it is implemented. The fact cannot, however, sufficiently be stressed that any such interdependence is not, as a rule, preconceived or planned in advance. It is for the historian of penal law or penology to establish on the statistical or other data what has, in fact, been the effect or the impact of any particular punishment in any given period or community. But the penologist is not necessarily either historian or statistician. While, like the lawyer, he builds on institutions which have come down from the past, neither his theorization nor his planning is bound by precedent or past experience, and he may well dismiss the past as one great error which exists only to be rectified or eliminated. This being so, for a penology to develop it is not necessary that there should be any practical experience with the effect and impact of punishments actually imposed. It is true that in the absence of such practical experience, penology will remain an exercise in theorization and planning, not unlike the exercises in “utopian” and idealistic legislation which have occupied so many geniuses in the past; but that does not derogate from the validity of, and the scientific attention due to, the reasons and considerations underlying the theories propounded.

I shall try in the following pages to explain Israel's policy on extradition, outline briefly Israel's Extradition Law, 1954, and survey Israel's extradition links with European countries. I shall then deal with Israel's experience with the application of the European Convention on Extradition of 13 December 1957, and shall consider possible modifications to the Convention. This task has been made easier by the three reports which have been presented by Professor Schultz, Mr. Duk and Mr. Karle.

The extradition of criminals presents for every country delicate and complex problems, for this branch of law, regulated by both international agreements and domestic legislation, is intimately related to each State's concepts of administration of justice and criminal law, as well as to its approach to human rights in general, and asylum in particular.

In this article we are concerned with the problem of the attitude of the criminal law towards the destruction of one's own property. In the elucidation of this problem it will be necessary not only to analyse various provisions of the special part of the criminal law, but also certain extra-penal laws, and to consider them against the wider background of the different social interests they are designed to protect.

The accepted view of our legal system is that among the liberties a person enjoys is the liberty to destroy or damage his own property.

This view is an outcome of both the influence of Roman Law, and of our social and economic system. This liberty is nowadays subject to limitations ensuing from the needs of society, the state or even of individuals, in the same way as use of property is not unrestricted, but has sometimes to submit to the rights of others (sic utere tuo ut alienum non laedas), The extent and form of these limitations depend mainly on the structure of a given society and its ideologies, but the differences between most societies, at least in the western world, are diminishing gradually.