With Professor Malcolm Feeley 
Professor of Law (emeritus) at the UC Berkeley School of law  

One of the two most trusted public institutions (along with the military) the Israeli Supreme Court developed a distinct legal system melding a number of legal traditions; Ottoman, British, American, Israeli, and Jewish civil law.

The court acts as both a constitutional and an appellate court in non-constitutional issues. As a ‘court of first instance’ sitting as ‘The High Court of Justice’ it must hear all petitions directed to it, including from non-citizens, thus a substantial portion of its time it taken up with these cases. 

With no formal written constitution, the Israeli Supreme Court ruling make it an especially challenging to understand.  Thus, an ongoing question: on what do its many and important constitutional rulings rest?

The lecture will explore the history and structure of the court, how justices are selected, the delicate constitutional balance it lives with, some noteworthy cases it has decided, and some issues that it is likely to face in the near future. And, the related question applicable to all courts everywhere:  how does it enforce its decisions?

Malcolm M. Feeley is the Claire Clements Sanders Professor of Law (emeritus) at the School of Law at UC Berkeley. He taught at Berkeley for 38 years, and before that taught at NYU, Yale, and the U of Wisconsin. He is the author of a number of books and articles on the judicial process and criminal process, both in the United States and abroad, and has been a regular visiting professor at political science and law faculties at Hebrew University, the University of Haifa, and the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya over the past thirty years. 

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