Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-lj6df Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-17T23:05:16.711Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Cause Lawyering in Transnational Perspective: National Conflict and Human Rights in Israel/Palestine

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Lisa Hajjar
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

There is an interest among scholars working on cause lawyering to “globalize” the subject by studying professional and political networks that span national boundaries. The globalizing scope of human rights provides a particularly relevant perspective, complementing the more narrowly attenuated focus on the roles and activities of cause lawyers. The subjects of this article are Israeli and Palestinian cause lawyers who have worked in the Israeli military court system in the Occupied Territories. This study adopts a transnational perspective both because the context itself (Israel/Palestine) is composed of relations that span national boundaries (statal and ethnonational) and because it befits a consideration of the international networks of human rights. Following an introductory discussion of transnationalism and a brief background on Israel/Palestine and the military courts, I turn to three aspects of cause lawyering: the political motivations inspiring lawyers to engage in such work; a comparative assessment of the legal and extralegal strategies pursued by lawyers; and the influence of human rights on the politics of lawyering in this context.

Type
Articles
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 31 , Issue 3 , 1997 , pp. 473 - 504
Copyright
Copyright © 1997 by The Law and Society Association

Footnotes

Earlier versions of this article were presented at the 1996 Law and Society Association annual meeting (Glasgow, Scotland) and the Working Group for the Comparative Study of the Legal Professions (Peyresq, France). For these opportunities, I would like to thank Austin Sarat, Stuart Scheingold, and William Felstiner. Ronen Shamir and George Bisharat have provided extremely useful counsel and information over the past few years, including comments on earlier drafts of this article. I am very grateful to the three anonymous reviewers and to Joe Stork and Bashar Tarabieh for insightful criticism and suggestions. Field research was supported by grants from the American Association of University Women, the Joint Committee on the Near and Middle East of the American Council of Learned Societies and the Social Science Research Council, the Institute for Intercultural Studies, and The American University, Washington, DC.

References

Abel, Richard L. (1995) Politics by Other Means: Law in the Struggle against Apartheid, 1980–1994. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Amnesty International (1991) Israel and the Occupied Territories: The Military Justice System in the Occupied Territories: Detention, Interrogation, and Trial Procedures. New York: Amnesty International USA.Google Scholar
Arian, Asher, Talmud, Ilan, & Hermann, Tamar (1988) National Security and Public Opinion in Israel. Tel Aviv & Boulder, CO: Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies & Westview Press.Google Scholar
Benvenisti, Eyal (1990) Legal Dualism: The Absorption of the Occupied Territories into Israel. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Bisharat, George Emile (1989) Palestinian Lawyers and Israeli Rule: Law and Disorder in the West Bank. Austin: Univ. of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Bisharat, George Emile (1995) “Courting Justice? Legitimation in Lawyering under Israeli Occupation,” 20 Law & Social Inquiry 349–405.Google Scholar
Briskman, Dana (1988) “National Security versus Human Rights: An Analysis of the Approach of the Israeli Supreme Court to the Conflict between National Security and Civil Liberties.” M.A. thesis, Harvard University Law School.Google Scholar
Cohen, Haim (1981) “Foreword,” in The Rule of Law in the Areas Administered by Israel. Tel Aviv: Israel National Section of the International Commission of Jurists.Google Scholar
Cohen, Stanley (1995) Denial and Acknowledgement: The Impact of Information about Human Eights Violations. Jerusalem: Center for Human Rights, Hebrew Univ.Google Scholar
Cohen, Stanley, & Golan, Daphna (1991) The Interrogation of Palestinians during the Intifada: Ill-Treatment, “Moderate Physical Pressure” or Torture? Jerusalem: B'Tselem, Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories.Google Scholar
Golan, Daphna (1992) The Interrogation of Palestinians during the Intifada: Follow-up to March 1991 B'Tselem Report. Jerusalem: B'Tselem, Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories.Google Scholar
Connor, Walker (1994) Ethnonationalism: The Quest for Understanding. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dillman, Jeffrey D., & Bakri, Musa A. (1992) Israel's Use of Electric Shock Torture in the Interrogation of Palestinian Detainees. Jerusalem: Palestine Human Rights Information Center.Google Scholar
Ellmann, Stephen (1992) In a Time of Trouble: Law and Liberty in South Africa's State of Emergency. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, Clarendon Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Falk, Richard A. (1985) Human Rights and State Sovereignty. New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers.Google Scholar
Gaulan, Tamar (1992) Letter from the Ministry of Justice dated April 8, 1992, published as introduction to Response of the IDF Military Advocate General's Unit to the Amnesty International Report on the Military Justice System in the Administered Areas. Tel Aviv: Office of the Military Advocate General.Google Scholar
Ginbar, Yuval (1993) The “New Procedure” in GSS Interrogation: The Case of Abd a-Nasser 'Ubeid, trans. Mandel, R.. Jerusalem: B'Tselem, Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories.Google Scholar
Ginbar, Yuval, & Stein, Yael (1994) Torture during Interrogations: Testimony of Palestinian Detainees, Testimony of Interrogators. Jerusalem: B'Tselem, Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories.Google Scholar
Golan, Daphna (1989) The Military Judicial System in the West Bank. Jerusalem: B'Tselem, Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories.Google Scholar
Gordon, Colin (1991) “Governmental Rationality: An Introduction,” in Burchell, G., Gordon, C., & Miller, P., eds., The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Gordon, Neve, & Mazali, Rela (1993) “The Slaughter House”: Sketch of the General Security Service Interrogation Center at Gaza Central Prison. Tel Aviv: Association of Israeli-Palestinian Physicians for Human Rights.Google Scholar
Hajjar, Lisa (1994) “Zionist Politics and the Law: The Meaning of the Green Line,” 2 Arab Studies J. 44–51.Google Scholar
Hajjar, Lisa-(1995) “Authority, Resistance and the Law: A Study of the Israeli Military Court System in the Occupied Territories.” Ph.D. diss., Dept. of Sociology, American Univ.Google Scholar
Hajjar, Lisa (1997a) Changes in Human Rights Activism in Israel/Palestine since Oslo.Google Scholar
Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine Occasional Paper No. 8 Washington: Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine.Google Scholar
Hajjar, Lisa (1997b) “Two People, One State: War, Peace, Sovereignty and Law in Israel/Palestine.” Unpublished, Swarthmore College.Google Scholar
Henkin, Louis (1990) The Age of Rights. New York: Columbia Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Hiltermann, Joost R. (1991) Behind the Intifada: Labor and Women's Movements in the Occupied Territories. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Human Rights Watch/Middle East (1994) Israel—Torture and Ill-Treatment: Israel's Interrogation of Palestinians from the Occupied Territories. New York: Human Rights Watch.Google Scholar
Hunt, Alan (1993) Explorations in Law and Society: Toward a Constitutive Theory of Law. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Kimmerling, Baruch (1989) “Boundaries and Frontiers of the Israeli Control System: Analytic Conclusions,” in Kimmerling, B., ed., The Israeli State and Society: Boundaries and Frontiers. Albany: State Univ. of New York Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kremnitzer, Mordechai (1989) “The Landau Commission Report—Was the Security Service Subordinated to the Law, or the Law to the ‘Needs’ of the Security Service?” 23 Israel Law Rev. 216–79.Google Scholar
Kretzmer, David (1990) The Legal Status of the Arabs in Israel. Boulder, CO: West-view Press.Google Scholar
Lahav, Pnina (1988) “A Barrel without Hoops: The Impact of Counterterrorism on Israel's Legal Culture,” 10 Cardozo Law Rev. 529–60.Google Scholar
Langer, Felicia (1975) With My Own Eyes: Israel and the Occupied Territories, 1967–1973. London: Ithaca Press.Google Scholar
Langer, Felicia-(1979) These Are My Brothers: Israel and the Occupied Territories, Pt. II. London: Ithaca Press.Google Scholar
Langer, Felicia-(1988) An Age of Stone. New York: Quartet.Google Scholar
Landau, Moshe, et al. (1987) Commission of Inquiry into the Methods of Investigation of the General Security Service Regarding Hostile Terrorist Activity. Jerusalem: Government Press Office.Google Scholar
Lawyers' Committee for Human Rights (1992) Lawyers and the Military Justice System of the Israeli-Occupied Territories. New York: The Committee.Google Scholar
Lawyers' Committee for Human Rights-(1993) A Continuing Cause for Concern: The Military Justice System of the Israeli-Occupied Territories. New York: The Committee.Google Scholar
Lustick, Ian S. (1980) Arabs in the Jewish State: Israel's Control of a National Minority. Austin: Univ. of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Lustick, Ian S. (1997) “Has Israel Annexed East Jerusalem?” 5 (12) Middle East Policy 34–39.Google Scholar
Mitchell, Timothy (1990) “Everyday Metaphors of Power,” 19 Theory & Society 545–77.Google Scholar
Mitchell, Timothy (1991) “The Limits of the State: Beyond Statist Approaches and Their Critics,” 85 American Political Science Rev. 77–97.Google Scholar
Moffett, Martha Roadstrum (1989) Perpetual Emergency: A Legal Analysis of Israel's Use of the British Defense (Emergency) Regulations, 1945, in the Occupied Territories. Ramallah, West Bank: Al-Haq/Law in the Service of Man.Google Scholar
Nassar, Jamal R., & Heacock, Roger, eds. (1991) Intifada: Palestine at the Crossroads. New York: Birzeit Univ. & Praeger Publishers.Google Scholar
Playfair, Emma, ed. (1992) International Law and the Administration of Occupied Territories: Two Decades of the Israeli Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Public Committee against Torture in Israel (1990) Moderate Physical Pressure: Interrogation Methods in Israel. Jerusalem: The Committee.Google Scholar
Rabah, Jamil, & Fairweather, Natasha (1993) Israeli Military Orders in the Occupied Palestinian West Bank, 1967–1992. Jerusalem: Jerusalem Media and Communication Centre.Google Scholar
Sarat, Austin, & Scheingold, Stuart A., eds. (1997) Cause Lawyering: Political Commitments and Professional Responsibilities. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Shamgar, Meir (1982a) “Legal Concepts and Problems of the Israeli Military Government—The Initial Stage,” in Shamgar, , ed., 1982b.Google Scholar
Shamgar, , ed. (1982b) Military Government in the Territories Administered by Israel 1967-1980: The Legal Aspects. Jerusalem: Harry Sacher Institute for Legislative Research & Comparative Law, Hebrew University, Faculty of Law.Google Scholar
Shamir, Ronen (1990) “‘Landmark Cases’ and the Reproduction of Legitimacy: The Case of Israel's High Court of Justice,” 24 Law & Society Rev. 781–805.Google Scholar
Shamir, Ronen (1991) “Legal Discourse, Media Discourse, and Speech Rights: The Shift from Content to Identity—the Case of Israel,” 19 International J. of the Sociology of Law 45–65.Google Scholar
Shamir, Ronen-(1996) “Suspended in Space: Bedouins under the Law of Israel,” 30 Law & Society Rev. 231–57.Google Scholar
Shefi, Dov (1982) “The Reports of the UN Special Committees on Israeli Practices in the Territories: A Survey and Evaluation,” in Shamgar 1982b.Google Scholar
Shehadeh, Raja (1988) Occupier's Law: Israel and the West Bank. Washington, DC: Institute for Palestine Studies.Google Scholar
Shehadeh, Raja-(1993) The Law of the Land: Settlements and Land Issues under Israeli Military Occupation. Jerusalem: Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs.Google Scholar
Shehadeh, Raja, & Kuttab, Jonathan (1980) The West Bank and the Rule of Law: A Study. Geneva: International Commission of Jurists.Google Scholar
Straschnov, Amnon (1994) Justice under Fire: The Legal System during the Intifada. Tel Aviv: Yediot Aharanot [Hebrew].Google Scholar
Thornhill, Teresa (1992) Making Women Talk: The Interrogation of Palestinian Women Security Detainees by the Israeli General Security Services. London: Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights.Google Scholar
Usher, Graham (1995) Palestine in Crisis: The Struggle for Peace and Political Independence after Oslo. London: Pluto Press, in association with the Transnational Institute and the Middle East Research & Information Project.Google Scholar
Verdery, Katherine (1994) “Beyond the Nation in Eastern Europe,” Social Text, No. 38 (Spring), 1–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yahav, David, ed. (1993) Israel, the “Intifada” and the Rule of Law. Tel Aviv: Israeli Ministry of Defense Publications.Google Scholar
Zamir, Itzhak (1989) “Human Rights and National Security,” 23 Israel Law Rev. 375–406.Google Scholar
Zureik, Elia (1979) The Palestinians in Israel: A Study in Internal Colonialism. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Google Scholar