One of the main issues in almost every treatment of abortion in Jewish Law is the legal basis for its prohibition. The recent trend in Rabbinic literature to categorise abortion as a form of homicide, proscribed by Biblical law, seems to constitute a break with the classical Rabbinic view, according to which abortion is neither homicide, nor directly prohibited in the major literary sources of Jewish Law, i.e. the Bible and the Talmud. Moreover, in the few instances in which abortion is discussed in these sources, it would seem that no such prohibition exists.

This article will analyse the Biblical and Talmudic passages which deal with abortion, and survey the various Rabbinic opinions as to the legal basis for its prohibition. Particular attention will be paid to the argument that abortion is a biblically-proscribed form of homicide, and to the reasons which may underlie the adoption of that argument by a number of authorities in recent times. We will also analyse the significance in Jewish Law of the stages of foetal development.

Our analysis will be both historical and normative, and in this context it will be a valuable exercise to compare the position in Jewish Law to that in the Canon Law of the Church of Rome. Although the Church Fathers held that abortion was a form of homicide, and the contemporary position of the Catholic Church reflects this attitude strictly and unswervingly, the Medieval Canonists adopted the distinction between the formed and the unformed foetus, based on a tradition derived from the Septuagint version of the Biblical passage dealing with the consequences of striking a pregnant woman (Ex. 21:22–23).

The concept of “autonomy” and the related concepts of “self-rule” and “self-government” are terms of both constitutional law and international law. While they are of ancient origin, their current importance is due to their use in the Camp David Agreement relating to a Framework for Peace in the Middle East, of 17 September 1978. That agreement speaks of: providing “full autonomy to the inhabitants” of West Bank and Gaza; a free election of a “self-governing authority”; giving due consideration to “the principle of self-government by the inhabitants of these territories”; establishing “the elected self-governing authority” in the West Bank and Gaza; negotiating an agreement which will define the powers and responsibilities of “the self-governing authority” to be exercised in the West Bank and Gaza; and beginning the transitional period of five years when “the self-governing authority (administrative council) in the West Bank and Gaza is established and inaugurated.”

The derivative forms of criminal liability — attempt and complicity — are the subject of a vast literature, yet there has not been a systematic, comprehensive examination of the preparatory offences in legislation, case law, or even in scholarly writings. One can hardly even find a satisfactory definition of such offences. Therefore, our first task will be an attempt to provide one, because absent a definition, we will not be able to proceed toward a solution to problems that are of no insignificant practical importance.

First among these problems is the question of the appropriate legislative policy to be followed in deciding when and in what areas to create preparatory offences. Second comes the question of whether it is appropriate to “derive” offences of attempt and complicity from preparatory offences, or, in other words, is it possible to speak of attempting a preparatory offence or being an accomplice to it. Third, should we make recourse to the principles applicable to criminal attempt in construing preparatory offences?

1. In his article “Criminal Jurisdiction over Aircraft Hijacking”, Dr. Y. Dinstein analyzes the provisions of the Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Seizure of Aircraft, of December 16, 1970—hereinafter referred to as “the Hague Convention”. This convention deals with States' jurisdiction with regard to the offence of “hijacking”, as defined by Article 2 of the convention, in accordance with the nature of their connection with the offence committed.

The learned writer, in the course of his analysis, postulates three premises. The first premise is that Article 4 of the Hague Convention lays down an order of preference with respect to the jurisdiction of the States referred to in that Article. The second premise is that this order of preference is reflected in the order of the paragraphs of Article 4 which specify which are the states in question (paragraphs 1 and 2). The third premise is that the Hague Convention does not provide for universal jurisdiction in respect of the offence of hijacking.

The enactment of Basic Law: Human Dignity and Freedom marks the beginning of a new era in Israeli law. This is a fitting opportunity to sketch an initial outline for the relationship between the constitution and the substantive criminal law, and the effect of constitutional principles on penal law. The truth be told, the constitutional principles already existed prior to the enactment of the Basic Law. And if, for example, we examine Prof. Feller's approach to criminal law, we cannot but be impressed by the highly developed constitutional element. Nevertheless, Basic Law: Human Dignity and Freedom does provide an excellent excuse for addressing the subject. Moreover, its enactment paves the way for certain interpretive changes in Israeli penal law, and because it allows for judicial review of the legislature of the future, some clarification is called for as to the limits of legislative power in the field of criminal law in light of fundamental constitutional principles.

Basic to constitutional law and criminal law is a shared image of human beings. It is a conception of human beings as “morally” autonomous, with the basic faculty to understand reality and distinguish right from wrong, able to contribute to developing social norms and to understand and internalize them, competent to decide how to act and capable of realizing that decision.

The problem of democracy and judicial review is a problem engendered by successful constitutional courts. For where courts are not successful in establishing veto powers over legislation, no problem or only a very limited problem occurs. Of course any court interpreting statutes in the process of applying them does some law making. How much this law making interferes with democracy depends on how easy it is for the legislature to legislate. Where legislatures can amend statutes easily, they can easily correct “errors” of judicial statutory interpretation. Judicial review of the lawfulness of administrative action essentially involves the same power of statutory interpretation with the same potential for legislative correction.

Most of the nations of the world that do not have successful constitutional courts are not democracies. Indeed, no state without considerable claims to democracy has successful judicial review. These facts are clues to the obvious. Constitutional government is limited government. In the real world we do not encounter nondemocratic limited governments although we encounter many shades of more or less democratic, more or less constitutional governments. So there is some affinity between democracy and constitutionalism.

There has been a growing trend in recent years towards the adoption of evidence-based policy in a variety of fields, including criminal justice. The purpose of evidence-based policy is to guide the activities of organisations based on scientifically verified facts, enabling the development of effective and efficient policies. In this article, we introduce the commitment of the Israel Prison Service (IPS) to the implementation of evidence-based policy by detailing the processes and development of a large-scale research programme in the IPS. We illustrate how the cooperation and commitment of key individuals, including successive IPS Commissioners, have enabled the implementation of evidence-based policy in a hierarchal organisation. Within this context, we demonstrate how human agency is a key factor in the successful implementation of the policy in criminal justice settings. By following the different stages of development and implementation, the example of the IPS also highlights the importance of agencies taking ownership of science. We conclude by arguing that the road to evidence-based policy is a ‘winding road’, highlighting the key turning points that influenced the institutionalisation of the policy in the IPS.

This Article discusses the normative basis for the protection of human rights in Israel and discusses various effects of the Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty enacted in 1992. The Article points out that this “constitutional revolution” affected not only the judiciary, which enforces the protection of human rights, but both the executive and the legislative branches that have also internalized the constitutional revolution, by carefully evaluating every bill proposed and every other government action to ensure that it passes constitutional muster. Additionally, the Article discusses the effect of the constitutional revolution on public discourse in Israel. A central part of the discussion is devoted to the role of the protection of human rights in the territories occupied by Israel since 1967, and to the role of the protection of human rights during periods of terror activities.

This article is primarily concerned with the issue of the justification for objection to service in the Occupied Territories and the claims made against such objection by those who share the objectors' opposition to the continuation of the Occupation, especially those who have, or at least purport to have, professional authority on the subject of disobedience. However, I will also discuss the question of the appropriate attitude towards such an objection from the perspective of the State and the courts, mainly because many people confuse the considerations that should inform the State's approach towards objectors with those that should guide the objectors themselves.

The arguments against disobedience are divisible between those purporting to demonstrate that there are absolutely no legitimate reasons for refusal, and those purporting to show that despite the existence of reasons for refusal, such acts should not be committed since the reasons militating against them are even stronger. Two main arguments are invoked in rejecting the legitimacy of disobedience. First, it is claimed that such disobedience cannot be justified by a universal and ideologically-neutral principle. Secondly, it is argued that such disobedience undermines the democratic regime. These arguments will be discussed in the first section of the article.

In an epoch of inflation of the kind in which we are now living, the question of the correct date for assessing damage has come to be widely discussed. Should it be the date when the tort or breach of contract was committed, as the crystallisation doctrine urges? Or instead of the “date of the tort” or the “date when the damage occurs” should some other point of time be chosen, either the date of judgment or the date of payment? Or, more radically, should no particular date be adopted but subsequent events be taken into account in determining the existence and scope of the damage and assessing it, in so far as these events affect the damage, in the light of the proper interest of the injured party? (see infra, part 3).

The relationship between transitional justice and democracy is fraught and complex, and nowhere more so than in Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein. Iraq has experienced a range of transitional justice initiatives, including the trial and execution of its former leader, purges of the civil service and the military, and a series of reconciliation conferences. Yet democracy has not fully taken root and violence continues to plague many parts of the nation on a regular basis. This article argues that initiatives aimed at changing the structure of society – including but not limited to constitutionalism, frequent elections and the development of an independent judiciary – are more likely than purely symbolic efforts to contribute to the consolidation of democracy in the long term. It is these structural developments that have the greatest potential to transform society into a true democracy under the rule of law.

Until a few decades ago the opinion prevailed in England and in the United States, as also in continental Europe, that a contract is an agreement, although certain additional requirements were necessary to distinguish contract from other classes of agreement (see infra, para. 6). More recently, however, many leading American and English scholars have tended to substitute “promise” (or “aggregate of promises”) for “agreement”.

What characterizes the new view is not the mere use of the term “promise”: such use was widespread before and still continues among opponents of this view, and it is hard to deny that an obligatory contract is a promise or an aggregate of promises. The followers of the new view are distinguished by the fact that they prefer to define contract solely in terms of promise and sometimes even go so far as to reject agreement as an element of contract.

As far as we can determine from papyri and from Greek and Roman historians, circumcision was practiced among various nations in the Roman Empire, particularly in Egypt and Arabia. A few of the most important examples will suffice.

Herodotus addresses circumcision in Egypt and elsewhere:

… but my better proof was that the Colchians and Egyptians and Ethiopians are the only nations that have from the first practised circumcision. The Phoenicians and the Syrians of Palestine acknowledge of themselves that they learned the custom from the Egyptians, and the Syrians of the valleys of the Thermodon and the Parthenius, as well as their neighbours the Macrones, say that they learnt it lately from the Colchians.

A consequentialist holds that systems of criminal punishment must be justified, if they can be justified at all, by their consequential benefits. It is a contingent fact, if it is a fact at all, that these benefits are most efficiently attained by a system of punishment, and by punishments which ordinary moralists would regard as just; and a thorough-going consequentialist must be ready in principle to justify punishments which many would condemn as unjust. A retributivist, on the other hand, insists that the justice of a system or instance of punishment is essential to its justification; and that the demands of justice cannot be reduced to those of consequential utility.

Retributivist accounts of punishment come in a variety of forms: we must distinguish those who insist only that guilt is a necessary, not a sufficient, condition of justified punishment from those who insist that punishment must be fully justified by reference to a past offence; and amongst the latter we find various accounts of how it is that an offence justifies or requires punishment. But essential to any retributivist account is the claim that an adequate justification of punishment must cite not, or not only, its consequential benefits, but its relationship to a past offence: it is a non-consequentialist requirement of justice that punishment must be of an offender, for an offence; that only the guilty may be punished, and that the severity of their punishments should be limited, if not completely determined, by the seriousness of the offences for which they are punished.

This article is built around three general observations. The first is that, in the current stage of the development of constitutional theory and practice, there is a need to create procedures allowing the review of constitutional amendments. The second is that traditional mechanisms, in particular the “internal” review of constitutionality of constitutional amendments, may not always be able to provide sufficient protection against amendments that run counter to the existing constitutional structure. The final observation is that, in the current state of globalization, international law—in particular international human rights law—may play a significant role in an “external” assessment of the legitimacy of constitutional amendments. This role of international law is particularly well developed in Europe, and most of our conclusions therefore focus on the European perspective. Given the universal nature of human rights, however, at least some of these conclusions may also be validfor other regions of the world.

The main purpose of this paper is, first, to consider the nature of psychopathic personality disorder, and then, to consider the capacity for criminal culpability of psychopaths and whether it is justified to hold them culpable. Initially, a description of the disorder of psychopathy shall be presented, highlighting those character traits deemed relevant for findings of criminal culpability. There follows a brief discussion of the main theories justifying punishment and their position on punishing persons incapable of effective participation in moral reasoning. Lastly, a discussion of the importance for moral condemnation of the capacity to feel empathy and the absence of that capacity in the psychopath, leading to the conclusion that these persons should not be regarded as blameworthy.

Lawyers in general, and international lawyers in particular, seem to suffer from what may be termed “the Latin formula syndrome”. In almost every branch of international law, one is faced with well-known epigrams of sententiousness drawn from the cornucopian source of ancient Latin phraseology. These venerable maxims, a legacy of the immense influence that Roman and Ecclesiastical law wielded on the fathers of modern international law, are in many respects very useful. In a few choice words, they epitomize fundamental ideas that may otherwise require verbose explanations, and they serve as a beacon for those groping their way in the legal dark. Unfortunately, however, laconic adages in general tend to be over-simplified, and, what is worse, as a result of constant and mechanical repetition, they are apt to lose their contact with reality and become petrified. If the law of nations is to be not merely “the law of notions”, but also the law of motion and animation, the epitaphs reflecting its major precepts must be reexamined every so often, else the mortmain of once flourishing but now barren concepts will keep it in a strangle-hold.

One of the more important of the Latin maxims that abound in international law is the general principle par in parem non habet imperium. This principle is commonly regarded as the starting-point for any venture into the field of State immunities, and it has even been said that

This Article explores the specificity of constitutional interpretation. It cannot be found in its object, but in the quality of the interpreters, the augmentative techniques it applies, and the standards it produces. The interpreters are not only courts, but also non-judicial authorities such as the Executive or the Parliament. Constitutional interpretation by these authorities tends to be exercised collectively. Although the methods that may be used for constitutional interpretation are the same as those used for statutory interpretation, one notices that there is more frequent use of certain types of arguments. But the most important distinctive character of constitutional interpretation lies in the nature of what it produces. Its output is the constitution. This is true first because by deciding what the meaning of the constitutional text is, the interpreter decides on the substance of the constitutional norm. But the interpreter also decides that a particular text, which until the moment of the decision had no legal value or had the value of a statute, has the meaning of a constitutional norm. At the same time he decides that by being a constitutional norm it prevails over other norms and decides what this supremacy entails. It can therefore be said that constitutional interpretation constitutes the Constitution.

1.1 On 31 May 1987, The Government of Israel resolved:

“That the matter of the GSS methods of interrogation regarding Hostile Terrorist Activity (HTA) is – in the wake of Criminal Appeal 124/87 (Nafsu) – a subject of vital public importance at this time which requires elucidation.”

Therefore the Government decided:

“To establish a Commission of Inquiry, in accordance with Sec. 1 of the Commissions of Inquiry Law, 1968, regarding the investigation methods and procedures of the GSS on HTA, and the giving of testimony in court in connection with these investigations.

“The Commission will make recommendations and proposals, as it sees fit, also regarding the appropriate methods and procedures concerning these investigations in the future, while taking into account the unique needs of the struggle against Hostile Terrorist Activity.”