The status of Arabic in Israel gives rise to question. Israel is a rare case of an ethnic nation-state that grants the language of minority group with a legal status which is prima facie one of equality. Both Hebrew and Arabic are the official languages of the State of Israel. What are the reasons for this special state of affairs? The answer is threefold: historic, sociological and legal. In various ways the potential inherent in the legal status of Arabic has been depleted of content, and as a result of that, as well as other reasons, the socio-political status of Arabic closely resembles what you would expect the status of a language of a minority group in a state that identifies itself as the state of the majority group to be. This answer, however, is another source of puzzlement – how does such a dissonance between law and practice evolve, what perpetuates it for so long, is change possible, is it to be expected?

We present an analysis of the legal status of Arabic in Israel and at the same time we proceed to try and answer the questions regarding the gap between the legal and the sociopolitical status of Arabic. We reach some of our answers through a comparison with the use of law to change the status of the French language in Canada. One of these answers is that given the present constellation in Israel, the sociopolitical status of Arabic cannot meaningfully be altered by legal means.

This article compares the law of foundations (charities) in Germany and Israel. What is a foundation and what it is created for, may receive different answers in different legal systems. When an Israeli jurist refers to hekdesh, he is not referring to the same concepts included in the German Stiftung. These differences find expression both in practical and theoretical matters. For example, German law recognizes the foundation as a legal personality, a characteristic lacking in Israeli law. Moreover, in Germany a foundation managing a business enterprise, or an enterprise adopting the legal form of a foundation, is an accepted phenomenon, but this is not accepted in Israel.

To understand what a foundation is, it is necessary to distinguish between the different types of foundations: on one hand public or private ones, and on the other hand religious and secular foundations. This article discusses the methods of creating a foundation (mortis causa or inter vivos) and examines the elements needed to create it: purposes, assets (one of the central points in Foundations Law is to ensure their efficient use) and management. The comparison does not obviate the problem of state supervision, needed to ensure the right of the beneficiaries and of the entire community to correct usage of the endowed resources.

In the final analysis, the paper stresses the importance of comparative law as an instrument aimed to broaden legal theory and enrich the dialogue between jurists of different countries.

The main purpose of this paper is, first, to consider the nature of psychopathic personality disorder, and then, to consider the capacity for criminal culpability of psychopaths and whether it is justified to hold them culpable. Initially, a description of the disorder of psychopathy shall be presented, highlighting those character traits deemed relevant for findings of criminal culpability. There follows a brief discussion of the main theories justifying punishment and their position on punishing persons incapable of effective participation in moral reasoning. Lastly, a discussion of the importance for moral condemnation of the capacity to feel empathy and the absence of that capacity in the psychopath, leading to the conclusion that these persons should not be regarded as blameworthy.

The purpose of this article is to give a panoramic view of Chief Justice Barak's theory of interpretation, namely the purposive theory, which is contained in a six volume treatise in Hebrew, Interpretation in Law. In order to understand this theory, it is useful to imagine a spectrum where, on the one hand, there is the subjective intent – namely the meaning that can be deduced from the intent of the writer of the text – and, on the other hand, the objective intent – namely the meaning based on the fundamental principles of the legal system. Various legal texts are interpreted by placing them on different points of this spectrum in accordance with the relevant area of law. Accordingly, in defining the purpose of Basic Laws, Barak gives primary regard to the fundamental principles of the system, with very little regard to the intentions of the drafters. In contrast, the purposive interpretation of wills occupies the other end of the spectrum, with maximum regard for the subjective intention of the drafter and a much smaller regard for the fundamental principles of the legal system. After a brief review of the philosophical and theoretical application of the purposive interpretation of various legal texts, the article moves on to demonstrate, through decisions of Chief Justice Barak, the judicial application of the purposive interpretation in two of the most important fields of interpretation: constitutional interpretation and interpretation of contracts.