In several rulings from 1962, 1992, and 2003, the French Constitutional Court (Conseil constitutionnel) has denied jurisdiction over constitutional amendments. This article shows that this solution can only be understood in the light of the doctrinal background that provides its intellectual justification. While refusing to judicially review constitutional amendments, the Constitutional Court is in fact deeply involved in the ongoing process of altering the Constitution. Also, while the quasi-official doctrinal analysis insists on the absence of material limits to the amendment of the Constitution, and on the absence of any “supra-constitutional” rules, an analysis of the language used by the Court in these rulings offers reasons to diverge from this view. While the Court has refused to review constitutional amendments, it has done so in a way that comes very close to the language used by those courts that stated that such amendments were justiciable. Far from adhering to a mere policy of neutrality and self-restraint, the Constitutional Court speaks a “language of eternity” with a rich substantive content.

Since the end of the Cold War, international law has increasingly been challenged by states and other actors. Specific norms have also been challenged in their application by new realities and obstacles. This article focuses on these challenges as they arise from the development of cyberspace and cyber operations, and offers an overview of the main questions arising with regard to the application of international law to cyber operations. By analysing the application of the existing norms of international law to cyber operations as well as identifying their limits, the article offers an accurate lens through which to study the contestation or process of reinterpretation of some norms of international law. The objective of the article is not to deliver a comprehensive analysis of how the norms of international law apply to cyber operations but to provide an overview of the key points and issues linked to the applicability and application of the norms as well as elements of contextualisation, notably after the failure of the 2016–17 United Nations Group of Governmental Experts on Developments in the Field of Information and Telecommunications in the Context of International Security. The article comprises three parts. The first part focuses on the applicability of international law to cyber operations. The second part identifies challenges that affect the applicability and application of international law in general, while the third part analyses challenges that affect specific norms of international law, highlighting their limits in dealing with cyber threats.

The broad meaning of the term res judicata covers all of the various possible binding effects of a judgment on subsequent litigation.

It may be assumed that the need for finality of judgment is recognized by many, if not by all, systems of law. The present study, however, is directed to the examination of the rationale behind the doctrine of res judicata and the meaning of the identity of actions, as reflected in Anglo-American and Israeli law.

Res judicata is evidently not one of the easy problems in jurisprudence as many have noted in the past. As to England and Israel in particular, one can hardly say it has been adequately explored.

It should be pointed out that the discussion is focused on judgments in personan, as distinguished from judgments in rem or quasi in rem; it does not deal with criminal cases, nor with decisions of administrative tribunals.

All three legal systems recognize two facets of res judicata. In spite of variations in terminology, these basic principles are usually held and understood identically.

“Self-determination” is not a mere phrase. It is an imperative principle of action, which statesmen will henceforth ignore at their peril.

The phrase is simply loaded with dynamite. It will raise hopes which can never be realized. It will, I fear, cost thousands of lives. In the end it is bound to be discredited, to be called the dream of an idealist who failed to realize its danger until too late to check those who attempt to put the principle in force. What a calamity that the phrase was ever uttered. What misery it will cause!

This article examines the applicability of Israel's Basic Law: Human Dignity and Freedom in the West Bank in light of international law, in theory and practice. The first part of the article concerns the need for such applicability in light of alternative domestic and international legal regimes. The article then explores three bases for the extraterritorial application of the law, and examines relevant practice. Finally, the article addresses the consequences of the extraterritorial applicability of the Basic Law for Israel's compliance with its obligations under the law of occupation. It argues that the application of the Basic Law extraterritorially in the West Bank may result in violation of Israel's obligations under the law of occupation.

The Article explores relationships between contemporary international human rights and democracy. In what respects are they two sides of the same coin, in what respects are they different coins? Do they depend on and complete each other? Can the two be in contradiction? The Article looks at these questions from several perspectives, including their historical connections, the changing definitions and understandings of each, their functional links, their determinacy, and their character as universal phenomena. It also indicates ways in which courts, which have long interpreted and applied human rights, now also reach decisions about constitutional issues by drawing on their conception of democracy.

The legal status of the Gaza Strip following the 2005 Israeli ‘Disengagement’, as well as the applicability of the laws of belligerent occupation with regard to this territory, have sparked, and continue to generate, a lively academic debate, involving states, organisations and legal scholars. Nevertheless, this debate has seldom included an examination of the de facto policy exercised by Israel vis-à-vis Gaza residents themselves.

This article seeks to fill the gap by providing a thorough examination of Israel's legal position towards the residents of Gaza, and a critical analysis of its policy and practice with regard to their movement as well as the movement of goods. This review, based on dozens of policy papers, regulations and procedures, as well as numerous judgments handed down by Israeli courts, reveals that Israel maintains a deliberately deficient and ambiguous legal position with regard to the status of Gaza residents. Under this position, the residents are merely ‘foreign residents’ who have no particular rights in relation to Israel. I argue that this position establishes a major legal vacuum in the protection afforded to Gaza residents and is therefore incompatible with both the reality of Israel's continuous control over Gaza as well as the objects and norms of international humanitarian law.

This Article offers a critical evaluation of the treatment of the suitability of applying human rights law to occupation situations offered by the English House of Lords in the Al-Skeini judgment of 2007. Al-Skeini concerned the application of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) to the United Kingdom in Iraq. In the decision, the majority asserted that the application of human rights law would amount to a form of “imperialism” in requiring an occupying State to impose culturally inappropriate norms in occupied territory. They also found that its application would undermine the status quo norm contained in occupation law, by obliging an occupying State to transform the legal system in occupied territory in order to bring it in line with the human rights standards in play. This Article argues that these two assertions are based on a mistaken understanding of the substantive meaning of human rights obligations in occupation situations, and the effect on this meaning of the interface with other areas of international law. It is suggested that the fear of “human rights imperialism” is, as articulated here, misconceived; that applying human rights law to occupation situations may not actually involve breaching the law of occupation; and that in any case a more sophisticated approach to the question of clashes in normative regimes needs to be adopted.

One of the outstanding products of civil-secular law in Israel is the institution of cohabitation. In Israeli law, the term “cohabiting couples” is used to refer to couples who conduct marriage-like relationships, but who, from a legal point of view, are not given the legal status of married couples. In Israel there is a trend toward narrowing the legal gap between cohabiting couples and married couples, and broadening the conditions that confer the status of cohabite. In present-day Israeli legal discourse, support for these trends is seen as a secular, liberal and progressive stance, while opposition to them is viewed as religious, moralistic and conservative.

This study aimed at enriching the public legal debate on cohabiting couples from a civil liberal point of view. In order to accomplish this task, I wish to re-examine the laws relating to cohabitation, in intention to break the conventional modes of thinking, and examine the laws dealing with cohabitation from an all-encompassing civil viewpoint, one which does not focus specifically on the unique Israeli context. Only after the more general discussion will we consider the position of Israeli law and consider the possibility of applying the general discussion to the specific Israeli context, keeping in mind the role of cohabitation in Israel as an alternative to the religious marriage. Previous projects I have conducted dealt specifically with the internal relationships including the mutual obligations between cohabitants. In this project, I wish to continue probing the Israeli family law situation but this time I wish to broaden the discussion by examining the external rights of cohabiting couples.

The discussion will expose the basic flaw in the Israeli context which makes the implementation of a fundamental civil structure difficult in terms of Israeli law. I shall explain why this flaw has a more serious impact in the context of “external rights” than in the context of internal commitment issues. Therefore beyond making proposals for specific amendments in relation to existing cohabitation laws, I shall clarify why it is necessary to develop additional alternatives to marriage which can also provide an alternative to cohabitation.

This article is a lightly revised version of the Lionel Cohen Lecture 2021 given by the author in October 2021. It looks at the relationship between legal academics and judges. The title of the article derives from one of the judgments of the great Lord Goff. The article has three main parts. First, it explores the increased influence of legal academics on judges in England and Wales towards the end of the twentieth century. Secondly, it examines how academic work can assist judges and makes a plea for recognition of the importance of ‘practical legal scholarship’. Finally, drawing on the author's own recent experience, the article examines how being a judge of the United Kingdom Supreme Court differs from being an academic.

After a political and constitutional crisis, the Government of Mr. Rabin presented its resignation to the President of the State on 20 December 1976. A few weeks later, the Knesset decided to bring forward the general elections from October 1977 to 17 May 1977. Under sec. 11 of Basic Law: The Government, the procedure for setting up a new government ceases immediately after the adoption of a Law to dissolve the Knesset. Thus, the government of Mr. Rabin, having resigned will “continue to carry out its function until a new Government is formed”. It is generally assumed that it will take approximately 4–6 weeks to form a new government after the elections of May 17. Thus, a new government will not begin to function before the beginning of July 1977, leaving the present government of Mr. Rabin to “carry out its functions” for more than 6 months, i.e., from 20 December 1976 until (approximately) July 1977.

Discussions of punishment and its role in modern societies often proceed as if punishment is co-extensive with the criminal justice system. Instead, I want to begin with the observation that a large part of punishment as a social institution is outside the criminal law — indeed much of it lies outside the legal system. To understand the working of punishment in our societies and what the law can do with it and about it requires that we examine the entire span of punishment, not just that part which epitomizes it in legal theory.

What is punishment? I hesitate to get into a definitional struggle on what must be well-worn turf. It seems to me that we can identify a core idea of “bad for bad” — i.e., the imposition of a harm, injury, deprivation or other bad thing on someone on the ground of the commission of some offence. The infliction of harm on the offender may be viewed as a goal (or as proximate to a goal of justice) or it may be viewed instrumentally as a means to social betterment, through rehabilitation, incapacitation, deterrence, reassurance, and so forth. Thus, the harm may be thought to redound to the offender's ultimate benefit or that of the society.

I found the slogan used as the title of this paper one sunny and cold Sunday morning in winter, 1985, on a vertical steel bar in the middle of the Brooklyn Bridge, above the East River, written with that ugly black ink that has replaced the bright colours of earlier years of graffiti in New York. Still, in contrast to the meaningless scribblings or markings of warrior names usually found in Manhattan these days, the message is nearly a joyful one: there is no point in expecting or demanding a “just society” from a state or other authorities — we will have to look after that ourselves and we can do it. By implication the writer also tells us what popular demands for “justice” really mean: an end to injustice. They are not “positive” demands, but in fact criticisms of some state of affairs or measures taken (or not taken) by the authorities: we know very well what is not just, even though we may not know what a “just” society should look like, and may even be sceptical whether we would like to live in one.

To answer the question whether the Israel legal system is based on Jewish Law foundations we must examine the two main operative factors which affect and control the nature of that system, that is, the legislative activity of the Knesset and the judicial activity of the courts. The fact that Israel law recognizes, though to a limited extent, the principle of binding precedent renders the courts active participants in the law-making process. This freedom of activity is restricted and operates only within the framework of the provisions of existing positive law, but this framework is quite flexible, as we shall later have occasion to note. Such restriction does not exist at all with regard to the Knesset's legislative activity. The Knesset is the sovereign legislature, unfettered even by a Constitution, and is free to make such law as it deems fit. The question, therefore, is on what assumptions do the various elements—the Ministry of Justice, the Government and the Knesset—engaged in the legislative process, function generally with regard to the subserving sources and more particularly with regard to the manner in which the law of the State is to rest upon Jewish Law.

It is difficult from an examination even of a representative sample of enactments passed by the Knesset to affirm that a clear and consistent policy indeed exists in this important regard, but from time to time expression has been given by those concerned to some of these underlying assumptions and it is proper that we should glance at these.

This was an appeal from a decision of the Tel-Aviv-Yafo District Court, declaring the appellant Ross to be liable to extradition on the Attorney General's petition presented at the request of the Government of the United States.

The appellant had been indicted before the Federal Court of the Eastern District of Louisiana on two charges, namely, transportation of a person in interstate and foreign commerce and receiving ransom money, in contravention of, respectively, secs. 1201 and 1202, chap. 18, para. 55, of the Federal Criminal Code. It was alleged that on August 21, 1972, the said Ross, being in possession of a revolver had kidnapped the two and a half year old Diana Cando Creon from her parents' home in the town of Pueblo (Mexico); that between that date and September 12 of the same year he had taken the child across international and interstate borders, from Mexico to the United States and, within the United States, from New Orleans, Louisiana to Biloxi, Mississippi; that he had illegally detained her throughout this period for the purpose of obtaining ransom, conducting negotiations to that effect with her father; and that he eventually succeeded in obtaining, in return for her release, the sum of U.S. $ 105,000—after which the little girl was found safe and sound in a hotel in Biloxi.

This article analyses the relationship between the scope of security needs that are cited as justification for restricting humanitarian assistance in situations of occupation and the scope of the occupant's obligation to facilitate and/or proactively provide humanitarian relief. It argues that, compared with a non-occupant, an occupying power may consider broader security goals as reasons to restrict humanitarian assistance, but that doing so imposes a greater responsibility on the occupying power to provide alternatives to the humanitarian assistance being restricted. In addition, as a normative matter, as increasingly long-term security goals are included in the ‘military necessity’ cited as a reason for restricting humanitarian assistance, the ambit of what is included in humanitarian assistance should be expanded to include the economic development and investment in infrastructure needed to provide for humanitarian needs in the long term. This kind of regime would enhance the self-regulation of warring powers by requiring those with the ability to engage in long-term security planning to use that ability also to provide for the long-term humanitarian needs of the civilian population. The article examines restrictions on humanitarian assistance in Gaza as an example of how this normative arrangement might work in practice.

Armed conflicts are always harmful for civilians and hence all attempts should be made to avoid them. However, considering that armed conflicts do occur; economic sanctions provide States with a viable alternative. This Article illustrates the need for limitations on the use of economic sanctions. It describes the characteristics of economic sanctions and the existing International Humanitarian Law (IHL) limitations and also suggests that economic sanctions should be further regulated offering three main principles to guide these limitations: the principle of severity, according to which the most severe economic sanctions should be prohibited; the principle of effectiveness, according to which economic sanctions should be allowed only if the State imposing the sanctions can plausibly demonstrate that the sanctions are effective; and the principle of conditionality, according to which the imposing State should declare specific achievable goals for the sanctions, and lift the sanctions immediately when these goals are achieved.

Dean Acheson frankly reconfirmed the right of self-preservation, when he asserted, “…law simply does not deal with … questions of ultimate power—power that comes close to the sources of sovereignty…. No law can destroy the state creating the law. The survival of states is not a matter of law”. It is beyond the law.

Given the existence of man's elementary loyalty to autonomous states, the necessity for using force springs from the need of states to depend fundamentally on self-help in order to guarantee their survival and welfare. This search for security in a system of politics without government, forces the state to be dependent upon military self-help.

Heinz Steinert and Louk Hulsman represent “abolitionism” — a stream of critical thinking about criminology, crime, criminal law and punishment that has been developing in Western Europe (mainly Holland, Germany, Austria and Norway) over the past two decades. Given that the participants to this Conference are mainly Anglo-American and Israeli academics or lawyers who have been quite insulated from this intellectual movement, it seemed to me that my most useful task as commentator would be to place these ideas in their wider intellectual context. After this, I will select a few general themes from these papers and compare them to the papers by Abel and Galanter in the related session on “Alternatives to Punishment”.

My own position towards abolitionism is that of a sympathetic, but critical fellow traveller: I agree with much, want to believe more but am skeptical about some.

This Article challenges the premise that the separation of state and religion is a necessary predicate for religious free exercise. The state's duty to treat people as equals requires it to ensure that all citizens enjoy reasonable access to religious services. Public supply of religious services thus enhances the exercise of freedom of religion. The extent of public involvement in the provision of a religious service is not by itself a sufficient justification for the regulation of the relevant activity. In certain cases, the intervention is justified by reasons that are unrelated to the scope of government involvement. A prominent example is the case of competition between different religious congregations over limited resources, such as space and time at a holy site. Regulation of activity is then required in order to ensure reasonable access. In other cases, the government enhances the powers of religious bodies, and thus generates a concern of religious coercion. In these cases the governmental role may well result in an infringement of religious freedom. However, such a conclusion is not self-evident, and a detailed assessment of the over all effect of the government involvement is required in order to determine whether the involvement—and what type of involvement—is desirable.

These and related arguments are demonstrated through a discussion of the Israeli experience of almost six decades of intensive involvement of a democratic state in supplying religious services. The Israeli case can serve as a thought-provoking hypothetical on the consequences—and thus of the desirability—of adopting a model of extensive establishment of religion(s) by a democratic state.