Initially I was taken aback at the request that I express my views on the
most important aspects of the general part of the draft Israeli penal code,
because the draft contains Anglo-American legal concepts, such as “strict
liability” and “mens rea”, which are unknown in
Continental-European criminal law. At second glance, however, something
quite different came to my attention; namely, that the contents of the draft
reflect, to a large extent, the European legal tradition even though the
terminology is in part quite different, and even though the draft only
partly corresponds to the present dogmatic structures of the European legal
system. Some of the passages almost sound like summaries of a
middle-European textbook on criminal law. At the outset I want to offer my
opinion on the draft: it is a good draft, up to the level of international
discussion. It even sets out important parts of the general principles of
liability much more precisely than does the German Criminal Code. Many of
the draft's solutions are, of course, open to debate, but precisely for that
reason we are assembled here.