Mark Washofsky

17. Itamar Warhaftig,“Chakirot hashaba”kh le’or hahalakhah,” Techumin 20 (2000), 145-150.

18. Public Committee Against Torture in Israel v. The State of Israel and The General Security Service, HCJ 5100/94(hereafter, Public Committee). The English text can be found online at the Supreme Court ’s search engine , http://elyonl.court.gov.il/eng/verdict/framesetSrch.html . For the Hebrew version, see at http://elyonl.court.gov.il/files/94/000/051/a09/94051000.a09.pdf.

19. See especially Public Committee(note 18, above), sections 33-37. 20. Public Committee(note 18, above), section 22.

21. Chok yesod: kevod ha’adam vecheruto, enacted by the Knesset in 1992 and revised in 1994; the text is available at http://elyon].court.gov.il/heb/laws/adam.htm On the concept of the“Basic Laws” see David Kretzmer ’s chapter on constitutional law in A. Shapira , ed., Introduction to the Law of Israel(The Hague: Kluwer Law International, 1995), 39/1.

22. Public Committee(note 18, above), sections 39-40.

23. In particular, Warhaftig dismisses the Court ’s comments on the“necessity defense” as an affront to common sense: if“necessity” is sufficient to absolve the police of liability resulting from rough treatment of the prisoner during interrogation, why should it not be cited in advance as an a priori warrant for such tactics(Warhaftig, 145)? The professor seems to overlook the fact that fine distinctions of this sort are the mainstay of every legal system, including the halakhah, which frequently distinguishes between the standards of lekhatchilah and bedi’avad.

24. The Israeli courts are not bound by“Jewish law” or the halakhah but by the legislation and precedents of the Israeli legal system. Nonetheless, mishpat ivri scholars like Warhaftig have always been interested in charting the points of connection and contrast between Israeli law and Jewish law. This activity is motivated by a frankly ideological bent: the desire that Jewish law should become the legal foundation of the Jewish state or at least that the law of the state should be informed and guided by traditional Jewish legal principles. For a sympathetic overview of the mishpat ivri enterprise, see Menachem Elon , Jewish Law: History, Sources, Principles(Philadelphia : Jewish Publication Society , 1994), especially volume four.

25. 1 number these points here for the sake of convenience; they are not so numbered in Warhaftig’s essay.