Joel Zussman

Joel Zussman, 1962

Joel Zussman (also Yoel Sussman ; born October 24, 1910 in Krakow ; † March 2, 1982 ) was an Israeli lawyer and judge .

Life

After attending school, he studied law at the University of London , from which he graduated with a Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.). After completing his postgraduate studies , he received his doctorate as Dr. phil. at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg . In 1934 he emigrated to the British Mandate Palestine , where he was admitted to the bar .

After the establishment of the State of Israel, he became Chief Prosecutor of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in 1949 , before being appointed as a judge at the Supreme Court in 1951 , of which he was Vice-President until 1953.

As a judge, he was a rapporteur in the "Ya'akov Yardor v. Central Election Committee" trial in 1965, a fundamental decision on Israel's electoral law, thereby creating the concept of a " self-defending democracy ". It was about the admission of the radical Arab list "Al-Ard" to the elections for the 6th Knesset . The Supreme Court upheld the Ministry of Defense's exclusion of the list and thus the ban as a banned organization. In his verdict is Zussman called it to the Federal Constitutional Court in the process of party ban the Socialist Reich Party (SRP) in 1952 and the KPD ban from 1956 as a precedent and stated that in certain cases to the constitutional standing of the natural law derived Considerations that are higher than any legislation :

“Just as an Individual is not bound to agree to being killed, neither a state is obliged to consent to being annihilated and erased from the map… The German Constitutional Court… spoke of a“ fighting democracy ”, which does not open its doors to acts of sabotage in the guise of legitimate parliamentary activity. For myself, as far as Israel is concerned, I am prepared to confine myself to “self-defending democracy”, and tools for defending the existence of the state are at hand, even if we have not found them set forth in detail in the Elections Law. "

"Just as an individual is not obliged to consent to be murdered, neither is a state obliged to give its consent to be destroyed and wiped out from the map ... The German Federal Constitutional Court ... speaks of a" fighting democracy "that opens its doors does not open to acts of sabotage in the form of parliamentary activities. As far as Israel is concerned, I myself am prepared to restrict myself to a "self-defending democracy", and instruments to defend the existence of the state are in place, even if we do not find them written down in detail in the electoral law. "

In 1976 he was appointed President of the Supreme Court as the successor to Shimon Agranat, a position he held until he retired.

For his services to the judiciary and justice he was awarded the Israel Prize in 1975 together with the then Attorney General and later President of the Supreme Court, Aharon Barak . In addition, the Joel Zussman Institute for Applied Law was founded in 1984.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ BVerfGE 2.1
2. ↑ BVerfGE 5.85
3. ^ Raphael Cohen-Almagor: The boundaries of liberty and tolerance: the struggle against Kahanism in Israel . 1994, ISBN 0-8130-1258-9 , p. 184.
4. ^ Gad Barzilai: Wars, internal conflicts, and political order: a Jewish democracy in the Middle-East . 1996, ISBN 0-7914-2943-1 , p. 191
5. ↑ Winner of the Israel Prize  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ( MS-Word )  
6. ↑ Institute of Advanced Judicial Studies ( MS-Word ; DOC file; 175 kB)