The Security Interests Law, 1967, created a revolutionary change in Israel's law of security interests inasmuch as it replaced the previous obsolete regime with a modern one. Notwithstanding, it refrained from adopting a clear position on the question of whether a non-corporate debtor may create a security interest over his assets by means of a floating charge. Such a charge, which according to Israeli law may be given by companies and cooperative societies, applies to both the current property of the debtor and any property which he may acquire in the future. The uniqueness of the floating charge, however, is not merely insofar as it extends to the future property of the debtor. Unless otherwise provided for, the floating charge allows the debtor to continue to execute transactions with his assets, such as their sale or mortgage, whereby the grantee of the rights by virtue of such transactions is not subject to the floating charge.

The sages held that part of a man's praise is told in his presence and all of it in his absence (BT Eruvin 18b). Even as Prof. Tedeschi sits before us in his valour – for so our sages have designated the age of four-score – I am well aware that he has no desire for eulogies and that he is a man who shuns honours. Indeed, only the entreaties of his students and friends moved him – with great difficulty – to participate in this festive meeting of the Academy of Sciences and Humanities. His valour is in his humility. This is the man and such has always been his chosen path. As I know him and respect him – and, I admit without shame, also love him – I shall, in deference to him, conduct myself in strictest accordance with the dictate of the sages and shall sing but the smallest part of his praises. Nevertheless, we owe it to ourselves to give an accounting of the work of this great jurist from whose well we have quaffed and who, as a rising spring, is as prolific today as in his youth.

Compelling litigants to undergo medical examinations or tests raises a very clear problem of conflicting values. On the one hand, compelling any person to undergo a physical examination or test against his will is a clear impingement on his rights of liberty, privacy and bodily integrity. On the other hand, there are situations in which without such examinations or tests of a civil litigant the right of his adversary to fair and properly conducted litigation would be frustrated.

In this article, we will discuss how four different legal systems have attempted to balance these conflicting rights in their development of rules concerning such medical examinations. We will discuss rather fully three systems that are viewed as following common law procedure – namely, those of England, the United States and Israel – and compare them with that of Italy, as an example of the Romanist civil law countries.

The legal scholarship of Prof. G. Tedeschi is broad and comprehensive, encompassing all areas of the civil law and reaching into the public law as well. At its base, there lies a solid jurisprudential foundation, in the context of which Prof. Tedeschi has devoted considerable thought to the various issues of the theory of precedent. In gratitude to Prof. Tedeschi, my venerable teacher and dear friend, to whom I owe the greatest of debts, and who for me serves as both model and symbol, I would take this opportunity to consider one aspect of the doctrine of precedent – that of overruling precedent.

I am very happy and honoured by my friend Prof. Stephen Goldstein's invitation to give my own modest contribution to the vigorous cultural life of this University, and in particular to this seminar, dedicated this year to the in-depth study of that most important subject, “res judicata”.

A final judgment represents the coat of arms of judicial activity, that which clearly separates and distinguishes this function distinctly from other functions of the State, i.e., legislative and administrative. In my view, the concept of a final judgment in a legal system, at a particular moment in history, is of unique interest in understanding the structure of that system's legal proceedings, its conception of adjudication and the ideology which inspires it.

The subject thus becomes central in the science of legal proceedings; the temptation for me to deal with it at length is very strong. I realize, though, that the usefulness of a survey of a foreign system depends on simplifying and limiting the description. That is why I have singled out one aspect of res judicata, i.e., the finality as part of a judgment, and I have chosen to deal only with recent developments in the Italian doctrine of party limits.

The protection of data in computer-based systems is a serious and growing problem. It is one of the most challenging technical problems in the field of computer science today. The objective of this paper is to provide a technical overview of the problem and to suggest some steps that need to be taken to assure progress in the field toward cost-effective systems that provide adequate protection.

The Problem: Protecting the privacy of data in computer systems involves establishing safeguards against accidental disclosure as well as protection against a deliberate attack. During system failures and restart procedures errors in coding procedures often cause data to be stored in the wrong files or put sensitive data out on the printer along with diagnostic information intended for maintenance personnel. You have probably had the experience at some time of being wired into someone else's telephone conversation.

Israel's Restrictive Trade Practices Law, 1959, after a period of relative quiescence, appears to have become the subject of significant enforcement efforts. A major event reflecting this development was the filing of criminal charges against the country's four leading banks (and a top executive of each) in mid-1984 for illegally combining to fix interest rates paid on negotiable certificates of deposit. The prosecution was eventually resolved early in 1986 by a plea bargain which included another major event – the first negotiation of remedial rules of conduct to prevent future violations (hereinafter the “Bank Rules” or “Rules”), which were hailed by the chief enforcement official, the Controller of Restrictive Practices, as adding an efficient and highly important tool to enforcement of the Law.

The Bank Rules are similar to the consent decrees familiar to United States antitrust law. Indeed, the parties and the Chairman of the Restrictive Trade Practices Board, retired Supreme Court Justice D. Bechor, explicitly recognized and discussed the relevance of United States precedents in the proceedings which produced the Bank Rules. Just as the bank case has heightened awareness of the Law, so adoption of the Rules is probably a harbinger of remedies to come. The Bank Rules are thus of considerable practical relevance to counsel concerned with commercial contracts and practices as well as of general interest to those following the international diffusion of antitrust ideas.

Concern with the question of equity – in the Aristotelian sense of epieikeia – in the teaching of Maimonides has been revived by the profound study of this basic and complex subject by the late Eliezer Shimshon Rosenthal. The immediate purpose of that study, amplified in the intricate manner characteristic of the author, is to show that Maimonides' answer regarding the Halakhah on the last hour for eating hamez on the eve of Pessah is intimately associated with his perception of the generality of the Torah as expressed in Part III, chapter 34 of The Guide of the Perplexed, and comparable to another well-known responsum of his concerning the prohibition of listening to musical song.

In the course of his discussion, the author points out the connection between Maimonides' approach and the writings of Aristotle, and in a special appendix he enlarges on the relationship of Aristotle to Plato. Rosenthal's understanding of Maimonides' position gave rise to a critical response by Shalom Rosenberg, which in turn led other scholars to contribute to the debate with their own clarifications and comments.

The advent of a new brand of intellectual creativity, which followed developments in computer technology, created a considerable body of proprietory interests in computer software and data. There was therefore a search for legal instruments to provide protection against unauthorized exploitation of the intellectual property in them.

Several legal paths were attempted: contractual protection, patent law, trade secrets law and copyright. Of these, the current opinion is that copyright law is the most suitable instrument to protect rights in software and data.

This article is a synopsis of a monograph which will be published shortly (in Hebrew) by the Harry Sacher Institute for Legislative Research and Comparative Law. I dedicate it to Professor Tedeschi because he was the one who triggered it ten years ago, with his suggestion that the study of law, and especially the study of contexts of discretion in the law, cannot be complete without detailed studies of the ways in which officers in practice use their powers. Custom thus has an easily overlooked importance as a source of law even in modern systems, in the many areas in which mere knowledge of the normative framework within which powers are exercised is insufficient for a knowledge and understanding of the law.

Tedeschi's suggestion seemed correct on its face, to an extent sufficient to motivate me to leave theorizing about law from the armchair and look into the practice of law enforcement. I emerged from the adventure even more convinced of his insight than when I started.

While working on the subject I realized that comparative analysis was also of relevance to such questions, and that important questions were raised about the utility of such analyses in attempts to solve one's problems. Again I have found that Tedeschi articulated the conclusion I have reached in an early article published years ago.

So these insights of his were added to the many things for which I am indebted to Professor Tedeschi: the solid commitment to legal scholarship for which he has always stood; the varied, persistent and prolific interest he has in all things legal and in the life-problems which the law seeks to regulate, resulting in many essays which are to this day classic in their field; and the fact that he is among the rare scholars who practice what they preach. If we take the importance of custom as an example, Tedeschi insists on including sections on custom in all his articles on legal problems, and in many instances this combination of great analytical strength and attention to social reality is what makes Tedeschi's writings so important. It is rare to have such people as one's teachers, and I feel lucky and grateful to have been his student.

The larger study on which this article is based elaborates in some detail these larger jurisprudential questions of the complex relationships between solutions of legal problems (or law reform) and legal theory, empirical research and comparative analysis. Here I shall confine myself to the major findings of my research into the reality and the ideal of the power of the Attorney-General to stay criminal proceedings.

Let me first say a few words on a personal theme. I had the privilege of being a student at our Faculty of Law of Mr. Shimron, to whose memory this conference is dedicated. I have very vivid memories of him. He taught us the course on Criminal Law, and he was a most impressive teacher. I should like to congratulate Mr. Shimron's family and Prof. Goldstein who co-operated in organizing this occasion.

When I heard the opening remarks by Judge Shalgi I made a note that I should tell the audience that the Committee for the Revision of the Copyright Law in Israel has up till now done very little with regard to computer software. However, on hearing Dr. Shalgi's following remarks I began to realise that actually our Committee had already done a lot in the context of computer software. The Committee reached a decision that it was suitable and proper for the new Copyright Law to address itself and apply its rules to computer programmes, and to list computer software among the works that are protected by copyright.

In recent years a new trend has appeared in decisions of the Supreme Court concerning the interpretation of criminal prohibitions. According to this trend – which will be analysed in the course of this article – a penal statute must be interpreted in the same way as every other statute, there being no rule of restrictive interpretation particular to criminal law. The interpreter must choose that interpretative option which best realizes the objective of the legislation, even when that option is based on the irregular and secondary meaning of the words. The legislative objective is often identified by the Court as the broadest possible defence of the social interest protected by the norm. It is this trend that we wish to discuss, or rather, to criticize.

Since this is a legal seminar, I thought it would be appropriate to begin with a case. There is a person in Los Angeles who has been operating an electronic bulletin board on his personal computer. What that means is that he has memory attached to his computer, and it is possible for anyone else in the country with a computer to dial into that bulletin board and leave a message automatically in the memory. That message can then be accessed by anyone else who dials in.

This person does not exercise any control over the messages that are put in. It is open to anyone who wants to put a message in there. Somebody put into that bulletin board the telephone credit card number of a rich person. Subsequently, many other people dialed into the bulletin board, got the telephone credit card number and charged phone calls to that person. No one knows where the number came from. The board operator was prosecuted under a criminal charge. The question is, is he liable?

Renunciation and remission are not comprehensively treated in the new Israeli legislation. And although the legislature has referred to these terms in the course of its legislation, they are nowhere defined.

The first reference to the terms, chronologically speaking, is in sec. l(c) of the Gift Law, 1968: “A gift may consist in the donor's renunciation of a right against the donee or in the donor's remission of an obligation of the donee towards him”.

In the chapter treating of “Several Debtors and Creditors”, the Contracts (General Part) Law, 1973, provides an enlightening reference to the terms under discussion. Sec. 55(c) states: “If the creditor discharges one of the debtors of the whole or part of the obligation - by way of waiver, remission, compromise or otherwise - the other is discharged to the same extent unless a different intention appears from the discharge”. Thus we have before us a list of terms (renunciation, waiver, remission, compromise, discharge) that often appear in modern codices as factors that terminate a debt by means other than performance.

From the first, when human beings started to communicate with each other, information carried a message. The Information Society was born as soon as the first human creatures exchanged information.

Over history, information, like everything else, has developed and changed character. Information still carried a message, but rather quickly it must have also become power. When Francis Bacon coined the expression “Knowledge is power”, at the end of the 16th century, it had already been a truth for millions of years. Knowledge postulates information.