That the question what is legal logic should still arise today appears paradoxical, for law is after all one of the oldest of human disciplines and logic has in the twentieth century become one of the most developed of the disciplines of contemporary philosophy. Yet comparison of a number of recent works dealing with the subject, all of which, not being without merit, have enjoyed a measure of success, is enough to show that the problem exists and is even strongly disputed.

Of four such works, two—those by E. Levi and K. Engisch—do not use the word “logic” in their titles, though they deal with legal reasoning and legal thought. The other two, on the contrary, expressly purport to deal with legal logic. Strangely enough, however, their authors explicitly deny the specific existence of such a discipline, whereas Levi and Engisch underscore, without any hesitation, the specific nature of legal reasoning and the existence of a particular logic, legal logic.

Thus in the first paragraph of his work, where Klug attempts to define the concept of legal logic, he states that it comprises the study of the rules of formal logic as used in the judicial application of rules of law (p. 6); that legal logic is therefore practical logic, consisting of the application to law of the rules of pure or theoretical logic which is general logic (p. 7).

Under common law and in other legal systems, including our own, which have in whole or in part adopted English tort law, each tort possesses its own special physiognomy. Yet, the very term “tort” in its generality attests to the existence of certain elements, in addition to those which distinguish one tort from another, common both to the constituent facts—the situations giving rise to tortious liability, as hypothesized by law—and to the normative provisions—the general body of rules which in Israel is set out in various sections of the Civil Wrongs Ordinance, 1944–1947. We may, therefore, speak of a law of torts, with every tort having its own characteristic features, as well as of a law of tort, with one concept embracing the totality of torts. By attributing to these expressions a meaning other than that ascribed to them by the two schools of thought which have considered them antithetical, we indicate a state of co-existence.

To mark the twentieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the United Nations designated 1968 to be the International Year for Human Rights. The call went out to peoples and States all over the world to give particular thought then to the question of human rights and freedoms and contribute to their promotion and protection. Wherever the subject is raised, discussion will no doubt dwell upon the problems of the present and the future. I believe, however, that this is a suitable occasion to widen the scope, to cast a glance over the past, and to review the role of the Jews and of the “Jewish Question” in the nineteenth, and in the early years of the twentieth, century in instilling the concept of human rights into the conscience of mankind; it is also an opportunity to examine the part played by the Jews in the advancement of those rights at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919–1920.

From an historical point of view, the modern concept of human rights springs essentially from the rationalistic and cosmopolitan philosophy of the Enlightenment prevailing in the second half of the eighteenth century, and from the declarations framed at the end of that century in North America and, subsequently, in France during the Revolution. It was these declarations that laid the foundations of the democratic and liberal State. But the roots of the concept can be traced back to the Stoic philosophy of ancient Greece, to the teachings of the early Roman philosophers and lawyers and to the tenets of the medieval theologians; and it is, indeed, strange that only rarely have those engaged in the history of it made mention of the fact that ancient Hebrew religious thought, too, is concerned with the inherent dignity of Man and gives special prominence to the principle that all who are created in the image of God are equal—a principle clearly reflected in the status which the law of Moses assigns to “the stranger that sojourns among you”, and in the liberal attitude of that law towards the slave, as compared with that of other peoples.

Israel, unlike most modern States, does not have a Constitution embodied in a formal document which lays down the basic political assumptions on which the system of government is founded, and which is considered the “supreme law of the land”. The student of Israel's Constitution must, as in the case of the British Constitution, collate his country's Constitution, including its unarticulated “major premises”, from a close study of the practical workings of the system of government and from a number of diverse sources of varying legal force.

From a study of the workings of the system of government, Knesset (Parliament) legislation and the decisions of the courts, it would appear that Israel's courts, lawyers and others have asserted, almost without demur, the doctrine of the legislative supremacy of the Knesset as the underlying unarticulated major premise of Israel's Constitution. In accepting that assumption they seem to have chosen to follow the constitutional trail blazed by their British forerunners. This article is intended to test that assumption and to establish its exact application in the legal system.

Under the armistice régime, now a matter of history, a peculiar legal situation prevailed in Jerusalem, for no less than four distinct régimes of demilitarization could be found in the city: the Mount Scopus régime, the régime of the Government House Area, the régime of no-man's-land, and the régime of the limitation of military forces and equipment on both sides of the demarcation lines. The object of this article is to examine one of these régimes, that which obtained on Mount Scopus.

Today, the situation in Jerusalem is, of course, drastically changed, both with respect to the régime of the City as a whole, and with respect to Mount Scopus. The Jordanian attack of June 1967 resulted in a unification of this strife-torn city. Mount Scopus, for so long separated from Western Jerusalem, its humanitarian and cultural activities so long paralyzed, is slowly returning to life. The present study, which may be of interest to students of international law and relations, is of historical value only and does not relate to the current situation.

The method followed will be that of a pragmatic case study. In view of the special circumstances surrounding the establishment of the Mount Scopus Demilitarized Zone, a comparative, deductive or theoretical approach would be of limited usefulness. A special effort has been made to use primary rather than secondary sources. The writer has had the opportunity to consult the diplomatic archives of the Government of Israel.

The development of the law relating to bills of exchange in the Anglo-American legal system provides an instructive example of the interdependence of the judicial and legislative functions in legal development. The groundwork consists of over 2,500 cases concerning bills decided in England since 1602, when the first case on bills was decided by the common law courts. These decisions were based on the custom of merchants—whether in England or abroad—and on the writings of jurists from commercially advanced countries. Notwithstanding the great number of decided cases, the law was mostly uniform, owing to the judges' inclination to follow rulings given by their brethren and their desire to retain the uniformity of customary mercantile law. In 1882 the law in England was cast in statutory form and this was copied in toto, with minor changes, by many legal systems, including Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Ceylon, Cyprus and Palestine. Both in England and in countries which adopted the statute only few amendments have been made, thereby lending weight to Mackinon L.J's dictum that the English Bills of Exchange Act is the best law ever enacted by the British Parliament. Indeed, the drafting is clear and effective and has given rise to comparatively little litigation both in England and abroad. Whenever called upon to construe the Act, the English courts have usually interpreted it literally, with strict adherence to the letter of the law, and this interpretation was followed by other courts, whether by reason of the binding force of precedents or in order to maintain uniformity in the law. A monolithic system was thus created, based on a literal interpretation of the Act.

Continental systems generally permit a possessor to acquire rights against the signatories of a bill or note despite a forged indorsement, it being sufficient that the sequence of indorsement on the instrument leads to the possessor. On general principles, the Anglo-American law differs in this respect. As early as the eighteenth century, it was held, in Mead v. Young (1790) that the possessor of a bill to order containing a forged indorsement has no right to the bill and is not entitled to demand payment from the parties whose signatures preceded the forgery. This approach was followed by the English Act and the N.I.L. The U.C.C. follows this principle in laying down that a forged signature is inoperative as that of the person whose name is signed. A person who acquires a bill to order on which there is a forged indorsement is therefore not a holder of the bill nor in legal possession of it, nor an owner. He consequently has no right under the bill against parties whose signatures preceded the forgery.

The following are some reflections on the judgment of the Supreme Court in Abu Khadrah v. Attorney-General. The facts of the case, albeit very simple, enable a number of primary legal problems regarding the offence of “covering-up” a criminal act to be considered.

a. The facts. The appellant was aware from what someone had told him that his informant along with the appellant's brother and other persons had sailed in his brother's boat to Gaza—obviously before the Six Day War—had there met Egyptian intelligence personnel, had handed over a sack and received from them a not inconsiderable sum of Israel money. The appellant was charged under sec. 5 of the Penal Law Revision (State Security—Foreign Relations and Official Secrets) Law, 1957 (hereinafter called the State Security Law) with “covering-up” of an offence committed by his brother and the others contrary to sec. 22 (b) of that Law.

The purpose of this paper is to collect the cases in which the principle of doctrine of unjust enrichment has been explicitly employed by the Israel courts, and to subject them to descriptive and part critical analysis. In so doing it will be possible to indicate the sources and the scope of the principle in its various applications.

One may say immediately that neither the term “unjust enrichment” nor the various categories of which it is or may be the underlying or explanatory principle, such as “quasi-contract”, “constructive trust” or “equitable lien”, figure almost at all in the reports before the establishment of the State in 1948. That is not to say of course that during the period of the Mandate the courts provided no restitutionary remedies in the appropriate circumstances, but it is difficult to gather from the various instances in which rules of a restitutionary nature were applied any independent unifying principle, as some would have it, which might lead to the recognition of a generalized right, or, as others assert, any basic principle that would provide a link connecting the cases and solutions in this area of the law or the pattern into which these might be logically fitted.

The issue of free navigation through international waterways is not academic nor need any hypothetical questions be posed. The concept of free navigation and international interest continues to confront the concept of sovereignty and national interest. To solve some of the acute problems thus engendered, it has become necessary to establish a body of rules within the scope of international law.

This paper is devoted to one category of international waterways, the so-called international straits. “Still waters run deep” and it seems as if narrow strips of water are often the most troublesome.

The most recent controversy concerning free navigation through straits arose in 1967 between Israel and the U.A.R. over the Tiran Straits. In the absence of an international power able to enforce the so-called international rule of free navigation or to convince the parties that the rule did not apply, the conflict was resolved by force of arms.

No agreement exists between the littoral States as to the legal status of the Gulf of Aqaba and the Straits. The most cited document in this connection is the Geneva Convention on Territorial Sea and Contiguous Zone of 1958. Examination of the preparatory and subsequent material of the 1958 Geneva Conference on the law of the sea, leads to the conclusion that the problem of straits in international law is not so much a question of substantive rule as a problem of defining international straits. The rule as such of free navigation is well established and was articulated long ago by Grotius. The right of innocent passage and the freedom of the high seas is today basically derived from the rule as defined by Grotius.

The task of the legislator is indeed difficult when he has to consider and decide how far to extend the area to which the criminal law applies. The difficulty is most apparent in those forms of conduct which are seemingly directed towards some individual to whom civil law remedies are available, for then it must be asked whether these remedies are sufficient or if there is good reason for the addition of criminal sanctions.

The usual considerations in this respect are many and various—has the normal victim of the harmful conduct the ways and means himself of resisting it without the assistance of the authorities; does the normal perpetrator of certain kinds of harmful conduct possess sufficient means which enable him to restore the status quo if civilly sued; is conduct of this kind highly frequent; does certain behaviour have a special temptation, which can only be fought by the deterrent force of a criminal sanction; and especially, does the public conscience regard this form of behaviour a serious infringement of public values that justifies and demands public punitive reaction, irrespective of the wishes of the injured person.

Both the facts of The State of Israel v. Siman Tov, and the solution adopted in that case by the Supreme Court, raise, it is felt, a number of legal problems which warrant particular attention.

The respondent, Siman Tov, owner of a grocer's shop, sold goods worth IL. 6,000 on credit to someone called Pressman. When Siman Tov requested payment from Pressman, the latter offered him U.S. $4,000 which Siman Tov was to deposit with a third party of his own choice in return for a loan of IL. 12,000, on the understanding that Siman Tov would deduct the money owing to him from this last sum and hand over the balance of IL. 6,000 to Pressman. Siman Tov accepted the offer and received from Pressman a package containing 4,000 ostensibly genuine dollar banknotes. He then approached a neighbour, Binat, who agreed to accept the dollars as security for a loan of the equivalent sum in Israeli pounds. On examining the package and finding that the dollars were counterfeit, Binat returned them to Siman Tov and refused to go on with the transaction. Siman Tov for his part had believed the notes to be genuine until Binat's disclosure.

Under Israel law a person cannot be convicted for a sexual offence unless there is corroborative evidence. This means that if the accused denies that he has committed the offence, he cannot be convicted solely on the basis of the complainant's evidence.

Under English law the requirement is somewhat less rigorous: the judge must merely warn the jury of the danger of convicting without corroboration in such cases. The jury may convict in the absence of corroboration provided such a warning is given. There are, however, even in England, certain statutory offences where the more exacting requirement found in the Israel law is applied (i.e. that corroborative evidence be actually submitted).

It is certainly difficult to assess whether, and to what degree, international anti-slavery legislation has been successful. The facts are that in the nineteenth century, legal and religious motivations were conjoined with technical developments creating a situation in which the manpower problem came to differ in essentials from that which had sustained slavery, both in “exporter” and “importer” countries. In the result slavery was abolished west of the Atlantic, and with it slave trade on the western shores of Africa. It soon transpired, however, that the disintegration of the westward-bound trade only reinforced its eastward branch. Although attempts were made at an international level to extend to the East the western experience in abolition of the slave trade, they did not meet with full success, and, apart from the protection of women and minorities, abolition of slavery remains today the main problem of group protection confronting the United Nations Organization. At present, the U.N. is negotiating for its third set of “teeth” with which to confront this problem.

The standing of the United Nations in this matter, is that of an Agent of Protection—a function which has in the last two hundred years or so developed in each case where international legislation related to groups of beneficiaries (such as slaves, minorities, prisoners-of-war, etc.) which have no independent standing as subjects of International Law, and therefore are incapable of negotiating for themselves (or through representatives appointed by them) the conditions of their protection in respect to sovereign States as obligatees, and even less of providing for a control of such protection and the obtention of remedial action. The range of effectiveness of such Agents of Protection is obviously indicated with the effective influence which such agencies may exercise in the orbit of Order (and Protection) through Authority—as an Order subsidiary and supplementary to the Order (and Protection) through Consent.

The general rule is established that anyone may lawfully be called to give evidence and to produce every document in his possession, unless he can show a just ground for refusal. In a number of instances the law relieves a witness from the duty of replying, or of producing a document. These are exceptional cases, however, and the burden of establishing their applicability lies on the party claiming the exemption. The modern legal tendency is, so far as possible, to restrict the claims of privilege.

Rules of evidence recognize mainly the privilege against self-incrimination, the legal professional privilege, the marital privilege, and “State secrets”, when the Administration objects to the disclosure of information relating to public security, foreign relations or other important public interests. This article deals with the last mentioned privilege—a “thorny topic”, in more than one country. Both case law and doctrinal writings have, over the years, held various views on this problem. In England, the House of Lords' opinion on it has undergone a radical change within the last twenty-five years and it is also under present examination of the Law Reform Committee. The question arose before the Israeli courts on several occasions and the Ministry of Justice drew up three separate bills aimed at its solution, the last of which is now before the Knesset for consideration.

Introduction: With the increasing tendency in Israel to replace the old Ottoman civil law, thefamiliar question of the reception of Jewish (talmudic) law has once again become the subject of lively discussion. In his policy speech in the Knesset the then new Minister of Justice, Mr. Y. S. Shapiro, declared as his objective the gradual severance of Israel law from the present pervasive influence of the English legal system. He was too cautious to take a definite stand on the question of the reception of Jewish law (or any other specific system) to replace the present law, but aspirations towards this goal have recently been expressed on various occasions by representatives of different parties. The forceful demand “to base the laws of the State on the Halacha” comes especially from die religious parties. But representatives of the non-religious parties also recommend the reception of Jewish law in those areas of private law where no decisions on ideological grounds need to be made.

In point of fact, the unanimity with regard to the reception of Jewish law is based on two outlooks differing in origin. Non-religious circles view Jewish law as a cultural creation of national significance, comparable to the revival of the Hebrew language. The firm establishment of Israel law on Jewish legal principles is advocated as an expression of spiritual independence, stressing the historical continuity of the people residing in Zion.

The rise of Zionism, with its call for renewed national political life and return to the national homeland, inevitably evoked a material change in the mental attitude of the Jewish people towards Jewish Law, a law possessing, as I have already said, not merely religious value but also manifest national significance. Thus a movement was mustered of Jewish lawyers and scholars and others from all ranks of society, which regarded the return of Jewish society to Jewish Law a national restoration, parallel with the restoration of the Jewish homeland and the revival of the Hebrew language.

This movement for a restoration of Jewish Law signals also a new trend in its study. From modest beginnings in the 17th century, scientific research into Jewish Law had been occupied with a variety of problems, whether of the parallelism between the Jewish legal system and other systems, the moral and philosophical theories embodied in its institutions and of its vast many-sided historical and literary expression. The common feature in all this research had been that it was pursued for its own sake, for theoretical and not for practical purposes.

The transport of different items of cargo stored in one receptacle called a “container” is of recent origin and has been called the greatest development in transport since the introduction of the steam-engine.

The advantages to be derived from the use of containers are so obvious as hardly to call for explanation. The cargoes sent for transport by different shippers are stored at the beginning of the transport by rail or lorry in a closed container, transferred to a ship and again unloaded on rail or lorry for transport to the place of ultimate destination, and only there is the container opened and the goods discharged. This manner of transport reduces the risk of shortage and damage. Packing material need not be as strong and as heavy as required in the usual way of transport outside a container, the costs of loading and discharging operations are considerably reduced, saving of storage space is possible, ships will be specially adapted for this kind of transport, the time required for the transport of cargo may be considerably shortened, insurance premiums may be calculated in accordance with the diminished risk, demurrage payments may be decreased and all concerned, including the consumer, might benefit from this revolutionary kind of transport. The container can bring the goods, as has been said, “from door to door”.

E. Public Participation as a Factor in the Development of Jewish Law An additional important factor in the development of Jewish Law was the participation of the communal leaders and men of affairs in some of the Jewish legal institutions and in particular the major role of the community and its leaders in Jewish legislation. I have already referred at some length to the existence of the lay courts, on a considerable number of which halachic scholars sat alongside the lay leaders, business men and artisans, as well as to the institution of arbitration, in various areas of the Diaspora. Although in certain places and at certain periods these institutions induced limitations upon and even prejudiced the orderly development of the system of Jewish Law—and sometimes a proper juridical régime in general—nevertheless it would appear that when these institutions worked in harmony with the scholars and the courts constituted of qualified judges, this cooperation contributed not a little to the close adaptation of Jewish Law to the problems of everyday life, an event which was accompanied by great and fruitful development. In pre-emancipation Jewish society, which was as a group traditionally-minded, recognizing the higher virtues of and bound by the Halachah, such cooperation largely existed.