Like the ancient geographical area, American administrative law is also divided into three parts. In the American, as in the British conception, administrative law is concerned with powers and remedies and answers the following questions: (1) What powers may be vested in administrative agencies? (2) What are the limits of those powers? (3) What are the ways in which agencies are kept within those limits?

In answering these questions American administrative law deals with the delegation of powers to administrative agencies; the manner in which those powers must be exercised (emphasizing almost exclusively the procedural requirements imposed on agencies); and judicial review of administrative action. These form the three basic divisions of American administrative law: (1) delegation of powers, (2) administrative procedure, and (3) judicial review. This article will seek to present a synoptic survey of these three subjects. Its aim is to present an overview of American administrative law to the Israeli jurist, enabling him to understand the essentials of a system that is, at the same time, so similar to and so different from his own.

I am grateful to be here as a Lady Davis Visiting Professor on my fourth trip to Israel. I feel very much at home because of the warmth and hospitality of my colleagues and friends. Moreover, the University of Pennsylvania has an Israel-Penn exchange programme which we hope to expand, and I know that the new dean of our law school, Dean Freedman, will have more conversations with Dean Klein. Thank you for having me and for affording me new opportunities to augment my experiences in Israel.

I hope to help promote the role of criminology here at Hebrew University, especially the relationship between research in behavioural science and the law as well as social policy. I have just returned from a one-week trip to the States under the auspices of the National Academy of Sciences to discuss a new report of a Panel on Rehabilitation, which represents some of this admixture of science, ethics and law to which I refer.

I wish to share with you some thoughts about Western society's changing penal philosophy, with particular emphasis on the shift from rehabilitation to retribution. Some of what I discuss is rooted in empirical science; some is my personal perspective. There should be little difficulty discerning the differences. For many years of my professional life I adhered to William Graham Summer's dictum—Yale University's early 20th century sociologist—that the purpose of sociology is to describe, not prescribe.

In recent years there has been a constant increase in the number and significance of administrative contracts, that is, contracts to which the public administration is a party. Contracts between private individuals and government are a daily occurrence. Such contracts are essential to the performance of the executive's various actions and functions, and apart from their practical importance, they raise theoretical questions.

From a philosophical point of view, an administrative contract can be considered as a contract in which a person is party to a contract with himself, since the State embodies the entire community of its citizens.

The subject of administrative contracts has so far not received sufficient legal-academic attention. Discussion of this issue becomes more and more essential with the rapid increase of administrative contracts regulating complex transactions.

Another spreading phenomenon which is closely linked to administrative contracts is administrative promises (when such promises do not crystalize into administrative contracts).

The first problem arising in connection with administrative contracts and promises is the question of the substantive law to be applied. The problem of the substantive law gives rise to secondary problems as to legal remedies and jurisdiction.

It appears that administrative contracts are to be governed by one of three systems of rules: contract law, administrative law or a system which combines elements of the two systems.

However, no solution is clear-cut. The applcation of the law of contract causes a confrontation between the fundamental principles of the law of contract, mainly the principles of freedom of contract and sanctity of contract, and the needs of the administration, the powers of the sovereign and its duties.

The purpose of this essay is to give an aperçu of the varying approaches for the disposition of child custody cases developed by American law during the past thirty years and the Rabbinical Courts of Israel (hereinafter referred to as the Beth Din), a contemporary repository of the sources of Jewish law. The study that follows is not to be read as “a history of child custody” in the sense of tracing this legal topic as it might have developed over the course of time.

Though there will be occasion to allude to the relevant principles of American law and principles of Jewish law, it is the jurisprudential perspective rather than the substantive content which is the primary theme.

I. A parent's relationship to his child may be viewed as a status carrying with it certain responsibilities and duties owed to the child with reference to care, education, and support. When a family breaks up through death, divorce, separation, child neglect or abandonment, the individual who performs most of the parental functions, who lives and cares for the child is said to have custody of the child, even though someone else may exercise some other parental rights and obligations.

In determining a custody dispute between natural parents and proceedings involving a natural parent and a third party, American courts have frequently based their decisions on two doctrines.