Article 51 of the United Nations Charter states that:

Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken the measures necessary to maintain international peace and security. Measures taken by Members in the exercise of this right of selfdefense shall be immediately reported to the Security Council and shall not in any way affect the authority and responsibility of the Security Council under the present Charter to take at any time such action as it deems necessary in order to maintain or restore international peace and security.

International lawyers are still arguing about the scope of the right of self-defence in Article 51 of the U.N. Charter. Most of the arguments focus on the semantics of Article 51. Those who argue for a “restrictive view” of the provision emphasise the qualifying phrase “if an armed attack occurs”.

Professor Lawrence M. Friedman, the well-known legal historian and legal sociologist, stressed in a recent essay that the contemporary relevance of law within broader social phenomena could be analysed in terms of community expectations. He wrote that during the 19th century “[p]eople knew that they were exposed, at all times, to the risks of sudden disaster — disease, death in childbirth and childhood, accidents, chronic economic uncertainties. They faced these calamities without private insurance, without public welfare programs, and without legal liability rules that made it practical to collect damages from private citizens and companies”. Societies of the past fostered a “culture of low expectations” with regard to law as well as to life itself. In contrast, our contemporary society driven by medical, technical and social developments heads towards the “reduction of uncertainty”. Amazing progress in medicine, the full-fledged emergence of the welfare state, and the expansion of private liability for accidents and injuries have, at least in Western countries, greatly enhanced people's expectations from the social mechanisms. The stature of law has grown accordingly to unknown pre-eminence since all methods of reducing risks are now shaped in terms of legal norms.

More than twenty years ago, a study of the legal status of the kibbutz pointed out the shortcomings of the existing legal framework and its failure to deal with distinctive features of kibbutz society. The study cited a 1960 District Court decision in a tort case which expressed surprise and dismay that, “in the twelfth year of Israel's independence … it is still necessary to decide matters concerning the unique way of life of the kibbutz and the norms governing it – as well as the legal consequences of a conflict between the kibbutz world and the ‘outside’ world – according to law that did not take into account the possibility of the existence of an entity like the kibbutz and pursuant to criteria that are not at all appropriate”. In 1984, Justice Barak quoted that passage to the same effect and we can do the same today.