Travel is a great teacher. It focuses our attention by compelling comparisons between the unfamiliar and the familiar. It develops perspective by inviting the measurement of differences and similarities between what we see before us and what we have left behind.
In visiting the brave new world of Israel, Americans note many features different from our own country and some that remind us of home. As to our attitude towards the law, however, there is no doubt that in spite of our very different histories we march to the same drummer with you. Israel and America are both law-based societies. We share in common the fundamental belief that no ordered society can exist or thrive except under the law, that all persons (including the state) are equal under law, and that individual liberty is dependent on the law and on its fair and steady enforcement by judges independent of the other branches of government.