The “Jewish Seat” on the Supreme Court of the United States of America, which had been occupied by Justices Brandeis, Cardozo and Frankfurter, was after the tatter's retirement in 1962 offered to Arthur Joseph Goldberg. He was not the only Jewish candidate whom President Kennedy considered for nomination: the other was Paul Freund, Frankfurter's successor on the faculty of Harvard Law School and his intimate friend. Opinions were divided whether Freund's candidature was eliminated because of Goldberg's superior merit, or because the President nourished a grudge against him for having twice refused appointment as solicitor-general, or perhaps because there were already two many Harvard men in high office — a fact which had aroused criticism in some quarters. Goldberg had, for about one year, been Secretary of Labor in Kennedy's cabinet: though his actual successes in ameliorating strike-ridden labor relations were (to say the least) doubtful, the President and his aides at any rate had ample opportunity to acquaint themselves with his personal and professional qualities; and if an assumption of mutuality is in order, Goldberg on his part admired and revered the President well nigh unreservedly. Goldberg's reputation also outside the White House must have been well established: he was the only Jewish candidate for the Supreme Court whose nomination was unopposed and approved after a perfunctory hearing. The opposition to previous Jewish nominations, even to that of Cardozo who was otherwise uncontested, had always had antisemitic undertones which were absent (or suppressed) in Goldberg's case. It was suggested that had Kennedy survived there might have been yet another Jewish appointment to the Supreme Court: not so much because being himself the first Catholic to be elected President, he was particularly sensitive to religious discrimination, as because of his celebrated meritocracy, determined to recruit the best man available for every office.

If the term “developer obligations” seems unfamiliar, the policies which it denotes are familiar to anyone who deals with planning law: developer obligation s are requirements placed by planning authorities on developers to supply some public facility or amenity as a condition for granting a development permit. Developer obligations come in many forms: land dedication, payment of a fee, construction of a public facility, or supply of a public service. These requirements are known by varying names in many countries: in the U.S.A. they have come to be known as “exactions”, in Britain as “planning gain”, and in France as participation. Other countries may have many terms to indicate each separate tool, or no specific term at all. The term “developer obligations” is here proposed as an international term that, hopefully, has fewer culture-specific connotations than the other terms mentioned. I will use “developer obligations” in the broadest sense, to include some indirect mechanisms for financing public services, such as the land betterment tax, while “exactions” will be used to indicate the methods directly focused at financing such services.

Market overt deals with the conflict between the bona fide purchaser of a chattel and the person whose rights in the property are injured by the sale. Schematically there are three people involved in this situation: the original owner, the seller and the purchaser. The most simple illustration is the case in which A steals goods belonging to B and sells them to C, who does not know of their origin. On the common assumption that A disappears or is insolvent (and even on the assumption that his whereabouts are known and it is possible to file a claim against him) the question arises, who is entitled to the goods, B or C, and who must bear the loss. In the absence of special circumstances, one is unable to say which of the two has a more “just” claim to title — both have an absolutely valid claim. The layman and the legalist are confounded by this situation, and are without even a clear intuition of whom to favour.

The large variety of solutions to this dilemma offered by different legal systems is testimony to this conundrum. As in other questions, the Israeli legislature did not adopt a solution drafted by any particular foreign system, but drafted an original and independent rule. Elements of this rule are similar to the constituent elements in comparative rules in other systems, but the compilation of all these constituents is unique and different from all other rules.