It is known to lawyers in this country, and no news to those who deal with public law or are concerned with the drafting of legislation, that the legislative and the judicial branches of government are engaged in a continuous dialogue. The role of the courts in the dialogue consists of interpreting statutes to be applied by them, while the legislator at times enters into discussion with the Judiciary by reacting to a court decision through legislative action. It is these phenomena in the field of legislation, occurring as reactions to decisions of the courts, which will be briefly considered in the present article.

The determination of the legislative power to act in reply to a judgment of a court may be based on a number of different reasons. One possible reason is that the court expressed an unfavorable opinion upon the contents of a statute and the legislator, in response to the criticism of the judges, amends the statute in order to do away with the imperfections revealed by the court.

Continental systems generally permit a possessor to acquire rights against the signatories of a bill or note despite a forged indorsement, it being sufficient that the sequence of indorsement on the instrument leads to the possessor. On general principles, the Anglo-American law differs in this respect. As early as the eighteenth century, it was held, in Mead v. Young (1790) that the possessor of a bill to order containing a forged indorsement has no right to the bill and is not entitled to demand payment from the parties whose signatures preceded the forgery. This approach was followed by the English Act and the N.I.L. The U.C.C. follows this principle in laying down that a forged signature is inoperative as that of the person whose name is signed. A person who acquires a bill to order on which there is a forged indorsement is therefore not a holder of the bill nor in legal possession of it, nor an owner. He consequently has no right under the bill against parties whose signatures preceded the forgery.

Modern equality as derived from the Enlightenment has always had problems with difference. Whereas feudalism set inequality as the baseline, modern society sets equality as the baseline, but allows for unequal treatment based on differences. Thus, differences among the sexes have been invoked to treat women as inferiors and racial differences to deprive racial minorities of equal treatment. Liberalism has countered these moves by promoting a conception of equality as identity according to which race or gender-based differences are irrelevant for purposes of political participation or employment. More recent claims for equality based on identity politics which call for a type of equality that accounts for differences pose vexing problems for liberalism. How should liberalism handle this? By creating exceptions to generally applicable laws? By promoting group-based autonomy and self-government at the risk ofbalkanizing the polity? Or, on the contrary, by rejecting demands for recognition of differences and reinforcing equality as identity? After analyzing the dialectic of equality, this Article argues that, based on commitment to the premise that all human beings share an equal status for possessing the same capacity for moral choice, pluralism offers a better framework than liberalism for the best possible reconciliation of identity and difference. This implies a departure from the monolithic nation-state toward multi-layered interconnected centers of collective autonomy and self-government.

Is a party who breaks his contract entitled to restitution? This is one of the most difficult problems in the law of contracts. Williston, for instance, remarks:

We shall examine this question in light of the provisions of the Contracts (Remedies for Breach of Contract) Law, 1970.

Sec. 9 of the Law reads as follows:

In the suspended sentence, or as it is sometimes called, the conditional sentence, the defendant does not serve a sentence upon conviction. Service of sentence is postponed for a period of time. Whether the defendant actually will serve any sentence depends upon whether he abides by the conditions of postponement or suspension. Typically, the condition is that he shall refrain from committing additional crimes, sometimes without limitation, sometimes of a specified class.

There exists in the literature considerable debate over the value of the suspended sentence as a penal device, with the harshest criticsm coming from the Anglo-Saxon countries which share a strong preference for probation. Israel stands somewhere between these poles. While the legal tradition bequeathed her upon emerging into independence was Anglo-Saxon, she has, ever since, sought wisdom in other traditions as well, with the result that Israeli legislation has on occasion produced interesting and unique devices. The suspended sentence is, in my view, a case in point, worthy of being made known to a wider audience.

One of the recurring issues of Israel labour law has been whether an employee may validly waive statutory rights conferred upon him. This issue had led to a head-on collision between the Supreme Court and the Labour Court, with the latter adopting a position directly contradicting the Supreme Court's precedents on this issue.

On certain issues the Courts are in agreement. Both concede that a waiver is unenforceable where the employee is unaware of his statutory rights. Both concur that labour legislation is cognitive in nature and that an employee may not initially “contract-out” statutory rights conferred upon him. However where the right has already “accrued”—that is, where the employee is entitled by law to claim certain statutory benefits as a result of past employment—the Courts are in open conflict. The Supreme Court has adopted the position that an employee may waive such existing and accrued rights by agreement, may compromise them by settlement and may submit any disputed issue respecting them to an arbitrator for determination.

In his impassioned No More War: How the West Violates International Law by Using ‘Humanitarian’ Intervention to Advance Economic and Strategic Interests, human rights lawyer Dan Kovalik makes the case that the recently considered responsibility to protect (R2P) doctrine, which allows for humanitarian intervention in narrowly defined circumstances, is legally and morally untenable. Humanitarian interventions of this kind, Kovalik argues, mask the true imperial interests of those who intervene and perpetuate a colonial legacy of northern domination of the global south. No More War bridges academic and popular discourse, making it an informative read for those involved in the theoretical and legal study of international relations and for policymakers in the field. Nevertheless, Kovalik's book would benefit from a sharper distinction between international norms and laws. Although the impact of the R2P documents on international law is debatable, there is little controversy that the norm surrounding humanitarian intervention has changed. Moreover, as we show, there are reasons to believe that the law has changed as well. Kovalik's book would also have benefited from omitting a number of polemical points, which may alienate readers who might otherwise agree with his core theses.

In order to determine what major developments have taken place in tax law in Israel over the last 40 years, it is first necessary to formulate criteria with which to estimate the importance or centrality of changes in tax legislation. The emphasis here is on legal developments (in legislation and case law) rather than on changes in the tax system and tax policy. In the field of taxation, legal, economic and social questions are, however, interlinked; and it is moreover, a legal tool — legislation — that determines the tax system and its composition of various tax bases.

I. Cultural Property: Protection in Armed Conflict

The Return of Antiquities from Israel to Egypt

Halil Iscander Shahin Candu v. The Minister of Defence.

Muhamad Hussein Suliman Shachrur v. The Military Commander of Judea and Samaria.

On 21 January, 1993 an Egyptian archeological delegation visiting Israel and the Israeli Antiquities Authority signed an agreement whereby all archeological findings taken from the Sinai after 1967 (while Israel controlled the area) would be returned to Egypt within two years and no later than 31 December, 1994. It was agreed that artifacts which had already been processed and documented would be returned to Egypt within two months. The first shipment of these antiquities was transferred to Egypt on 29 March, 1993.

I am very happy and very honoured to have been invited to give the inaugural lecture in the series under the Sir Hersch Lauterpacht Chair of Public International Law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. It is a great honour to be connected with the name of Hersch Lauterpacht who was one of the truly great minds in the field of international law in our epoch, great as a scholar, great as an idealist, an innovator and a prophet; and it is a source of happiness to me to bear witness to the fact that he was also a great human being whose wisdom was illuminated with kindness and warmth. His friends and pupils remember him with love and gratitude.

For the purpose of this paper I invite you to accept with me the proposition that we live in an ecological crisis. The extent of the dangers confronting us is in dispute. The degree of urgency is debated. There are still serious gaps in our knowledge. The task of the scientists is enormous. Still, no one can ignore the existence of this crisis.

“The two worlds of man, the biosphere of his inheritance, the technosphere of his creation—are out of balance, indeed potentially in deep conflict. And man is in the middle. This is the hinge of history at which we stand, the door of the future opening on to a crisis more sudden, more global, more inescapable and more bewildering than any ever encountered by the human species and one which will take decisive shape within the life span of children who are already born.”

The main aim of Jeff McMahan's manuscript The Morality and Law of War is to answer the question: why and accordingly when, is it justified or permissible, to kill people in war? However, McMahan argues that the same principles apply to individual actions and to war. His main claim is that “a state of war… does not call forth a different set of principles, but merely complicates the application of moral principles that are of universal application.” In other words, “…in war, people have the same rights, immunities, and liabilities that they have in other contexts.” McMahan rejects “all doctrines of collective responsibility” and “liability” according to which “individuals can share in responsibility… or liability simply by virtue of membership in a collective.” His claim is that every individual is liable for what he has done and not for the actions of others—even if both are part of the same collective. Accordingly, McMahan challenges the common view that it is much easier to justify killing in war compared to killing in other contexts. Therefore, the scope of his project exceeds the context of war and extends to interpersonal conflicts between individuals that do not qualify as war. Indeed, McMahan has argued in the past for a similar account of self-defense in the individual context.

I. Historical and Comparative Backround: (1) Early medieval times. (2) The Ottoman Empire and successor States. (3) Personal laws in the colonies. (4) State and Church law as personal laws.

II. The Personal Laws as Autonomous Legal Systems: (1) Notion of legal system. (2) Personal legal systems. (3) Relationships between personal legal systems and between such systems and the State. (4) The dominant position of the State. (5) The personal laws as autonomous legal systems.

III. The Conflict of Personal Laws and the Interpretation of its Rules: (1) State legislation relating to personal laws. (2) The problem of qualification. (3) The renvoi problem. (4) Public policy.

IV. Connecting Principles: (1) Membership of an ethnic or religious group. (2) Influence of the will of the parties. (3) Other connecting principles.

V. Nature and Historical Function of the Conflict of Personal Laws: (1) The legal nature of the Conflict of Personal Laws. (2) The historical function of the conflict of Personal Laws.

The process of conversion to Judaism is paralleled to the acceptance of the Torah by the Jewish people at Sinai. In Jewish sources, the Sinaitic experience is viewed as a mass conversion of the Jewish people. The essence of this conversion was the acceptance of the commandments as binding upon the Jewish people. Similarly, the essence of a Gentile's conversion to Judaism in later generations, is his acceptance of the yoke of the commandments as binding upon him. In fact, the Talmudic sources go so far as to state that the Jewish people at Sinai underwent the same process as a proselyte: circumcision, immersion in a mikve and the bringing of a burnt-offering. In short, traditionally, the essence of conversion was the acceptance of the mitzvot.