Summary
Israel’s Declaration of Independence (the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel, 14 May 1948), as Lahav presents its legal career: quoted in her Chapter 4 epigraph for its promises — a state “based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel” ensuring “complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex” — it was held in Zeev v. Gubernik to express the people’s vision with political, not legal, authority, and was then re-established by Simon Agranat as an interpretive norm (Judgment in Jerusalem: Chief Justice Simon Agranat and the Zionist Century, lines 1111-1165).
Details
- In Zeev v. Gubernik the Court reasoned that the Declaration itself stipulated a constitution would be enacted, implying it was not a constitution, and that the Knesset alone was competent to express the people’s will; the Knesset never enacted that constitution (Judgment in Jerusalem: Chief Justice Simon Agranat and the Zionist Century, lines 1130-1160).
- In Al-Couri Agranat anchored personal liberty in part in the Declaration, the right having “resonated with the spirit of the Declaration of Independence, which stated … that the state of Israel shall be based [inter alia] on the foundations of liberty” (Judgment in Jerusalem: Chief Justice Simon Agranat and the Zionist Century, lines 1170-1200).
- In Kol ha-Am Agranat reinterpreted the earlier cases to re-admit the Declaration as a legal source: “Insofar as it [the declaration] ‘expresses the vision of the people and its faith,’ we are bound to pay attention to the matters set forth in it, when we come to interpret … the laws of the state” — after which, Lahav writes, reference to the Declaration became the cardinal method of giving meaning and direction to Israel’s laws (Judgment in Jerusalem: Chief Justice Simon Agranat and the Zionist Century, lines 1355-1375).
Related pages
Judgment in Jerusalem: Chief Justice Simon Agranat and the Zionist Century, Israeli Supreme Court, Kol Ha’am Case, Simon Agranat