In the field of Private International Law, as well as in other branches of the law, Israeli legislation reflects the inheritance of the past. The situation is particularly complex in relation to matters of personal status, where the principle of the personality of the law, characterising the legal set-up of the former Ottoman Empire, still prevails, although modified in various ways by enactments of the Mandatory period and the legislature of Israel. Yet the bulk of conflict rules are drawn from the common law as applied in England, a subsidiary source of legal rules under art. 46 of the Palestine Order-in-Council, 1922–47.

The details of the P.I.L. system actually in force in the State of Israel will not be dealt with in this paper. Our discussion will be limited to the main trends.

The rules concerning personal status in Israel have their basis in Ottoman law according to which the national law of foreigners was applied to them by the consular courts of their own States. This, the well-known system of the Capitulations, was maintained until the Treaty of Montreux of 8 May 1937.

When the British Mandate was set up in Palestine, the pattern obtaining in other territories under British administration was followed: the existing legal framework was retained and merely adapted to the new situation. The relevant Mandatory legislation consisted of the Palestine Order-in-Council 1922 and the Succession Ordinance, 1925. Under these enactments matters of personal status affecting foreigners (other than Moslem foreigners belonging to States who required them to submit in such matters, to the exclusive jurisdiction of the Moslem Religious Courts) were to be tried by the civil courts (the District Courts) according to their national law; if, however, the national law referred the matter to the law of their domicile, such latter law was to be applied.

In recent years there has been a growing concern about privacy in many countries. Consequently demands are being made that the law should afford privacy a more adequate protection. This new concern about privacy may seem surprising when we recall that people have always gossipped, that individuals have always sought information about others for various purposes, and that governments have always had an interest in knowing as much as they could about their citizens. The intensity of these recent demands for more legal protection suggests that conditions have changed, and that this change has created new threats for privacy. To deal effectively with these new threats we must first identify and understand them.

It appears that a combination of various factors, all of which are somehow related to technological developments, is responsible for arousing this interest in privacy. First is the development of the mass-media, which removed the traditional limitations on dissemination of information, and created an artifical demand for such information. Second is the development of electronic devices enabling invasions of privacy which were hitherto impossible. Third is the development and use of computerised systems for the storage and compilation of information. The threats to privacy are evident. Information about us can be retrieved from the files, or sought by detectives or journalists aided by sophisticated devices against which there is virtually no protection. This information may be used against us or disseminated in the mass-media and thus become “public knowledge”. Movements and conversations may be recorded.

Since the preceding article was written, the Kahn Committee, mentioned therein, has presented its report with a minority report by one of its members on the communications media. The central feature of the report is the Bill of a Protection of Privacy Law which the Committee recommends; a copy of the Bill is appended to show Israel thinking on the subject and to illustrate how far the Bill meets the matters raised by Dr. Gavison.

Apart from a very general discussion of the problems involved, the report contains a brief sketch by Dr. N. Rakover of those aspects of the subjects which are covered by traditional Jewish law and a comparative study by Dr. Gavison herself of the position mainly in the U.S.A., England, Germany, France and Canada and incidentally in Sweden, Switzerland, the Argentine, Brazil, Mexico and Venezuela, with special reference to recent legislation.

For the record it may be noted that the Committee was appointed in August 1974 by the Minister of Justice to examine the means by which protection of privacy can be secured. It held 16 meetings and heard or received in writing the views of various institutions and individuals.

Criminal liability, in the widest sense has its periods of ebb and flow; thus for a certain length of time it may extend over a greater field of human behaviour and then may withdraw and permit forms of conduct formerly regarded as criminal to be no longer so regarded.

Looking at recent developments in Israeli substantive criminal law it appears that we are now in a period of “flow”, which finds its expression in various forms, namely:

1) The adoption by the courts of less strict canons of interpretation of criminal legislation;

2) The application of general doctrines, especially those of attempt, conspiracy and complicity more widely than before;

3) The narrowing down of certain defences;

4) The creation of new offences or the amending of existing offences with a view to covering modes of conduct which have not, in the past, been subject to criminal law.

5) The broadening of the spatial (or territorial) application of the criminal law. This is generally expressed in Israel—according to English tradition—in terms of the jurisdiction of the courts, but in actual fact it is not a procedural matter but relates to the question of the breadth of the criminal law itself.

It has been said that there are no illegitimate children but only illegitimate parents, a paradox which reflects the view that the iniquity of the fathers should not be visited upon the children, that the rights of children should not suffer deprivation because of the “sin” of their parents. So put, it presents a challenge to those many legal systems which discriminate against children born out of wedlock, treating them as illegitimate and denying them rights against their parents or, in some jurisdictions, against their fathers. For all that, we are now witnessing in a number of countries a process which is blurring and largely doing away with the traditional disqualifications and discrimination against illegitimate children. Not only does the violation of the rights of a child because his parents bore him out of wedlock appear to many of us to be immoral in itself, but we go on and urge that it is wholly unreasonable to release the “sinning” parent from his obligations and place the burden of bringing up his child on society at large.

This last view does not, however, give any moral or legal approbation to bringing children into the world out of wedlock but suggests rather that the protection of the institution of marriage and family should properly find expression in the status of the unmarried parents. The problems to which this understanding of the matter gives rise are the subject of the present analysis of the pertinent Israel legislation.

It is a challenging observation that the same term—declaration—is used in many different contexts, though always when a process of primary normative postulation is being initiated. Declarations may be made by any entity having some normative competence—states as well as international organisations, whether intergovernmental or non-governmental. The normative impact will depend on the functional and legal standing which the entity may have. Declarations made by States may relate to constitutional law or refer to some addressee in international relations. In the first case, they are used to introduce optimâ formâ some constitutional charter, generally for the proclamation of independence of new States. In the second case, they may be unilateral or collective. In both cases they are always public, since publicity is considered essential to achieve the required effect—an effect inherent in the very choice of the term. The political motivation for the choice may arise from revolution, war or international parliamentarism.