In view of the importance of the Israeli Supreme Court’s recent decision in HCJ 5658/23 Movement for Quality Government in Israel v. The Knesset (the “reasonableness” decision) and the broad interest in this landmark case, we have decided to publish a translation of President (emer.) Esther Hayut’s majority opinion at this time, rather than wait until the completion of the translation of the full 738-page judgment.
Recent Developments in Israeli Law
Avinoam Sharon
Judgments of Interest:
The Israeli Supreme Court published its annual list of the Court’s most important decisions delivered between September 2019 and December 2020. Below, we present abstracts of selected cases, and links to English translations where available. The full Hebrew list can be viewed here. We also present a brief list of several recently published articles addressing or drawing upon Israeli law.
Articles of Interest:
The various measures adopted by the Israeli Government to confront the Covid-19 pandemic brought a flurry of petitions before the Supreme Court. The petitions ranged from a request to declare a Jewish leap year in order to delay Passover, to objections to particular restrictions and closures, and a challenge to the constitutionality of the contact-tracing regime adopted by the Government. Below, we present summaries of sixteen cases decided by the Court on petitions related to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Due to the high rate of incidence of the coronavirus in the city of Bnei Brak, on April 2, 2020, the Israeli Government declared the city a “restricted zone” for a period of six days, effectively putting the entire city under quarantine. The declaration was made by virtues of emergency regulations promulgated to confront the coronavirus epidemic.
In response to the corona virus epidemic, the Israeli government promulgated two sets of emergency regulations: (1) Emergency Regulations (Authorization of the Israel Security Agency to aid in the national effort to limit the spread of the new corona virus), 5780-2020; (2) Emergency Regulations (Location Data), 5780-2020.
Rivka Weill and Tally Kritzman-Amir have just posted on SSRN, “Between Institutional Survival and Human Rights Protection: Adjudicating Landmark Cases of African Undocumented Migrants in Israel in a Comparative and International Context.” The article is forthcoming in University of Pennsylvania Journal of International Law, forthcoming 2019. The abstract is as follows:
Video of Professor Yehudah Mirsky's lecture at Cardozo entitled "What's a Nation-State For?: Reflections on Law, Religion and Nationalism in a Post-Secular Age" is now accessible through the ISCP website here.
The Israeli Supreme Court Blog
In this issue of the Israeli Supreme Court Blog we present abstracts of four recent decisions of the Israeli Supreme Court.
Rivka Weill, Professor of Law at the Radzyner Law School, Interdisciplinary Center (IDC), has just posted "The Strategic Commonlaw Court of Aharon Barak and its Aftermath: On Judicially-led Constitutional Revolutions and Democratic Backsliding" (December 5, 2018) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
