Innovations in case law have traditionally always had retroactive effect also, first on the case in question, and therefore on past conduct, and then, to the extent that authority attaches to the precedent or it is at least followed in practice, on other cases subsequently heard, although the conduct involved here also preceded the declaration of the new rule. Justice Holmes, in a dissenting opinion of 1910, wrote: “I know of no authority in this case to say that in general state decisions shall make law only for the future. Judicial decisions have had retrospective operation for near a thousand years”.

It is fairly certain that Justice Holmes had the Common Law world in mind, but the picture would not be different if we looked at the situation elsewhere. In France as well, for instance, the rétroactivité des nouvelles jurisprudences has been considered as une infirmité du système jurisprudentiel.

Nevertheless, it is a fact that the situation excites some consternation among lawyers and the public, which is particularly strong in those matters where retroactivity is singularly severe in its effects and the legislature normally refrains from imposing it, although not forbidden to do so under constitutional principles (laws being interpreted and applied non-retroactively in the absence of any express provision in this regard) and in those instances where there was reliance, explicit or presumed, by the parties on the rule which is subsequently abandoned.

The late Sir Hersch Lauterpacht once expressed the view that “if international law is, in some ways, at the vanishing point of law, the law of war is, perhaps, even more conspicuously, at the vanishing point of international law”. This led him to the conclusion that the international lawyer must therefore do his duty, in the three particular areas to which he was then drawing the attention of his readers, “with determination though without complacency, and perhaps not always very hopefully”. The three spheres which Lauterpacht considered as meriting the attention of international lawyers at the time at which he wrote, 1953, were “further legal regulation of the humanitarian fringe of the problems involved in the use of new weapons of war, sustained exposition and clarification of the far-reaching provisions of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, and the further clarification of matters not covered by the Geneva Conventions, including the implication of the principle that the law of war is binding not only upon States but also upon individuals”. This great jurist did not live to see the current endeavours that are being made to carry out a revision of the international law of war and the increasing attention that is being paid to the humanitarian content of that law, and even more specifically, to the quest for better and more effective means of implementation of that law.

The Planning and Building Law passed its third and final reading in the Knesset on July 14, 1965. The Law was twelve years in preparation and is a comprehensive code, considered by text writers to be an adequate law for planning and building in a modern state. Based on the Town Planning Ordinance, 1936, the 1965 Law deviates from the old Law in significant areas. Most significantly, the Planning and Building Law requires the State to conform to the requirements of planning schemes, prepared at the national, district and local level. This deviation from the earlier Law is significant because the Government of Israel is the country's largest builder, and planning would be ineffective if the State were outside the jurisdiction of the Law. With this significant change duly published in Reshumot, the following analysis of a specific land use planning problem casts light directly on the Government's willingness to be governed, and obliquely on the effectiveness of the Planning and Building Law, 1965.

The Rules of Court which the International Court of Justice adopted in 1946, on the commencement of its existence, were essentially a reproduction of the Rules of Court adopted by the Permanent Court of International Justice on March 11, 1936 with such alterations as became necessary after the changes incorporated in the new Court's Statute, in comparison with that of the Permanent Court. When the Court adopted those Rules it did so with the intention of undertaking a more thorough revision after more experience of the judicial function had been acquired. Since then, the Court has had the matter under review, but for over twenty years nothing concrete has emerged.

The Court has had a rough passage in this period. This is demonstrated by insufficient judicial business, bitter debates on its role in the United Nations both in connection with advisory opinions and in connection with the inclusion of jurisdictional clauses in multilateral treaties drawn up in United Nations meetings, widespread mistrust of the Court as an institution and of judicial settlement as a mode for the pacific settlement of international disputes, and a general malaise attending everything to do with the Court.

Hold, hold, what are you doing now? Are you going to
arraign his whole life? How can he defend himself from
charges of which he has no notice? And how many issues
are to be raised to perplex me and the jury? Away, away!
That ought not to be: that is nothing to the matter.
Holt, L.C.J., Harrison's Trial
(1692) 12 How. St. Tr. 833, 864.

Exclusion of evidence of similar facts has not been specifically dealt with in the law of Israel and therefore, according to Art. 46 of the Palestine Order-in-Council, 1922, English common law rules have been applied by the courts as a matter of course despite the absence of the jury system in this country—and regardless of the stipulation at the end of Art. 46. The influence of these rules, as applied in criminal cases, is the main theme of this article.

In the words of J. Stone,

It is a truism to say that the characteristics of a legal system, in the social and political not less than in the technical field, depend mainly on the nature of its sources of law. If we confine our attention to Roman law, we may state that its achievements, as well as its failures were the consequence of the ways by which it was formed and developed throughout its long history.

The importance of this statement is enhanced by the fact that the Roman attitude to sources of law was apparently different from that of most ancient and modern legal systems. In particular, customary rules are said to have had a greater part in the creation and development of Roman law than of other legal systems. It would be misleading, however, to presume that the sources of Roman law, and the role of custom among them, remained unchanged during the course of Roman history.

Accordingly, at the very outset two points emerge, which merit discussion: (1) What was the part of customary rules and statutes in the creation and development of Roman law; (2) Whether, or how far, their relation changed from one period to another.

The prohibition against multiple trials for the same matter is a basic principle of criminal law and long a principle deeply rooted in European tradition. Many jurisdictions consider it important enough to deserve inclusion in their constitutions. Nevertheless the relevant provisions have been applied in quite diverse patterns throughout the various common law jurisdictions, and within each of them have developed unsystematically. They have been the subject of severe criticism down to the present time.

Three main doctrines have been developed in the common law jurisdictions:

(a) Former trial: This is better known in England as autrefois acquit and autrefois convict, and in the United States as double jeopardy. A man can be tried only once for his criminal behaviour. Once a lawful verdict has been rendered he is protected against further prosecution for the same matter. Under autrefois acquit and autrefois convict a verdict must have been formerly pronounced in the matter which is charged in the subsequent indictment. Under double jeopardy it is enough that the defendant has been in jeopardy of conviction (for the same matter) in former proceedings.

Disputes about the Christian Holy Places have played a major part in the history of the Middle East and indeed of Europe for many centuries. The main issues of these conflicts are still unsolved, and the fact that the Sanctuaries are now under the control of the State of Israel has added a new dimension to the problems.

This study tries to investigate the question of the jurisdiction over the Christian Sanctuaries as it presents itself today. It does not deal with the Holy Places of Judaism and Islam since their treatment, in spite of many common elements, requires different considerations.

The disputes about the Christian Holy Places are essentially disputes among Christian communities, and not, as might be assumed, controversies between Christians on one side and members of other religions—Moslems or Jews—or the government of the country, on the other. They spring ultimately from the divisions of the Church; and although political and national interests frequently played a part, they must be seen first and foremost in the context of the religious issues involved.

The study of monetary law is neglected almost everywhere, especially in Anglo-Saxon countries. It is treated as an obscure and special branch of commercial law of specific interest to bankers and their advisers. In fact, however, changes in the value of money are and have been a fact of life all over the world in the last fifty-five years. Monetary law is the legal dimension of monetary problems, intended to regulate the legal relationships affected by change in the value of money. Monetary law is thus in our time a branch of general jurisprudence and indeed it is one of the foundations of law. But the law is conservative and legal science has yet to discover the study of monetary law. Up to the present time very few people (including judges, lawyers and private parties) have any clear notion of how to deal with legal relationships affected by monetary changes and catastrophes. One of the abiding fallacies is that a cardinal public interest requires strict adherence to the nominalistic solution of private money disputes in disregard of the monetary changes that occur almost daily.

It is well-known that Jewish law forbids ona'ah “overreaching”; that is to say: the act of wronging a person by selling him an article for more than its real (market) value, or, conversely, purchasing from him an article for less than its real value (M. Bava Mezia 3.4, seq.). According to (anonymous—stam) Tannaitic halacha (law), the right to claim against ona'ah was always in the hands of the injured party, and whichever side constituted the injured party (be it the vendor or the purchaser), that side had the right to choose either to declare the transaction void, or to make up, or receive the difference (T. Bava Mezia 4.3). Another view, that of R. Judah (ha-Nasi, flor. c. 170–220), is however recorded. R. Judah states that regardless of which side is the injured party, the choice as to whether to annul the transaction or to settle the difference always lies in the hands of the vendor (B. Bava Mezia 50b, Y. Bava Mezia 4.3). This (minority) view was rejected in the Amoraic period by the great Palestinian scholar R. Johanan (flor. c. 250–79), so that the later halacha follows the anonymous (majority) Tannaitic ruling (Y. Bava Mezia 4.3).

The degree fixed in Tannaitic sources for ona'ah was one-sixth (M. Bava Mezia 4.3, 7; T. Bava Mezia 3.9). That is to say, anything less than one-sixth above or below the market price was not considered ona'ah, and the transaction was valid, while one-sixth or more constituted ona'ah, invalidating the transaction, unless the injured party (stam) or the vendor (R. Judah) agreed to settle the difference.

Western legal systems diverge radically in their approaches to setting limits on the privilege of self-defence. Some systems incline to the view that a person defending his or another life or property may use all the force necessary to stifle an aggressive attack. Taken to the extreme, this means that if there is no other way to apprehend a thief escaping with a petty bounty, one may shoot him—if necessary, shoot to kill. In contrast to this approach, which is adverse to limits on the use of necessary force, another set of Western jurisdictions insists that the degree of force meet two desiderata: it must be both necessary and proportional to the interest protected. The requirement of proportionality or reasonableness means that there are some cases, like petty thievery, where the cost of protecting a threatened interest may be so great that one must surrender the interest rather than inflict grievous harm on the aggressor.

The simultaneous application of the principles of universality and regionalism to the organization of international peace and security has naturally created the political and constitutional problems of how to secure a workable and appropriate relationship between universal and regional organizations. It is a paradox of the twentieth century that while world peace like war has tended to become indivisible, international organization of security remains tied to the principle of division and imperfect coordination of responsibility between universal and regional instrumentalities.

This article deals with the constitutional solutions adopted by the founders of the League of Nations and the United Nations to the problem of universal-regional relationship in international organization. Placing international constitution-making squarely within the context of the dynamic forces of international politics, the study identifies those political considerations bearing on the formulation of the constitutional relations between universal and regional organizations in both the League Covenant and the United Nations Charter. In addition, it emphasizes the important fact that the constitutional problems of international organization are inextricably related to the substantive problems of international politics.

There is a growing interest in observing the work of lawyers in active practice. There are similarities and differences among lawyers. Broadly stated we may classify lawyering functions into two categories, practice of litigation law and preventive law. Usually it can be said that lawyers who represent disputing parties are involved in litigation practice. Such a dispute situation arises out of some past events. The clients of the preventive law lawyer come to him for advice, guidance, or counsel before the client engages in a course of action. The client often wants to know how best to conduct his affairs within the legal structure so as to minimize the risk of later trouble and so as to maximize his legal rights.

Also, observations have led to inquiry regarding the nature of the lawyering functions. Lawyers exist and practice in different countries under different social, cultural, economic and legal structures. Yet often the clients have similar desires. Disputes arise between people, and the disputing parties seek the help of lawyers to represent them in the litigating process. Also, though less publicized, clients seek the help of legal advisers before engaging in commercial ventures. For a number of academic and practical reasons, the roles and functions of lawyers and legal advisers in different societies could be compared and analyzed.

The notion that a security interest could be created in any kind of property through registration rather than through transfer of possession seemed, until a few years ago, to be impractical and undesirable. When the Pledges Bill was debated in the Knesset, in 1965, the Minister of Justice objected to such a notion, saying that it was too revolutionary, and that it would cause many technical difficulties. Yet, when the debate on the Pledges Bill was over, a new Pledges Law was passed which introduced this very revolutionary notion of registration as a possible substitute for transfer of possession.

The Pledges Law, 1967, sec. 4, provides that: