This article seeks to evaluate Israel's implementation of the international law of occupation in the territories which it came to control after the Six-Day War, from a new perspective. Many scholars have criticized or justified specific Israeli policies by comparing them to specific norms of international law. Contrary to this scholarship, this article addresses the questions at the core of current debates over the implementation of international law: Why has Israel chosen to implement some specific rules of international law and to ignore others? And what caused the changes in Israel's implementation of international law?

Some of the answers to these questions can be found by examining the interests of various institutions involved in the implementation of International law, and the interplay between them. I suggest that in order to understand Israel's initial behavior one must look at the interests, goals and culture of the Israeli army, the IDF, the institution initially responsible for administering the territories. I shall further argue that subsequent changes in policies are a result of the struggle between the IDF and other Israeli institutions attempting to gain influence over the way the territories were controlled.

Debate about the impact of modern technology on copyright law has become polarized—even harsh. Owners, with some justification, contend that copying has become too easy and that strong protections for their assets must be implemented in order to insure the continued production of creative work. Users respond, with some justification, that such strong protections place intolerable constraints on their rights to browse in digital space, of contemporary culture and fairly use copyright works. The form of the debate—with both sides raising valid problems and neither finding an easy solution inside the existing structure of copyright law—suggests a need to rewrite copyright to insure remuneration to copyright owners while still providing easy, cheap access for users.

The most viable method for achieving such a goal is to institute a wide ranging system of levies on all devices and media that make it possible to quickly and easily copy protected copyright subject matter. In return for the payment of levies, owners would be required to allow users undisturbed access to their copyrighted works. This paper uses the sometimes checkered history of American copyright law as a vehicle for discussion of the problems technology presents to contemporary intellectual property law, the need for a levy system, the most significant requirements of a levy system and the nature of objections likely to arise to use of such a system.

In a democratic country an independent justice system plays a major role in protecting human rights and the rule of law. However, an independent judicial system is at risk from a number of factors that derive from outside the sytsem as well as from within. The external dangers facing judicial independence are often discussed; whereas the internal perils that weaken the system as well as judicial independence, are far less known. This article will focus on the danger from within and will discuss the judicial administration's influence on human rights, specifically the right to due process under the law.

Resort to the Court presupposes a disposition to depoliticize the issues; when this precondition is not attained on both sides of the fence, the Court's Advisory Opinions are bound to be ineffective. The Opinions will become part and parcel of the political contest and share in its outcome.

[Leo Gross]

It would make a mockery of the independence of the Court if it could never “reach conclusions at variance with the conclusions stated by the General Assembly”. … It would also render the Court largely useless as an organ for giving legal advice to the Assembly.

[D.H.N. Johnson]

There are some worrying signs that, far from developing traditional legal techniques in a way acceptable to old and new States, the Court may depart radically from legal patterns accepted in the West in favour of outright politicization of the Court.

[Lyndel V. Prott]

In the present case, worrisome trends that have been infecting the ICJ-General Assembly nexus peaked more overtly and ominously than ever before, recalling earlier fears that the Court's advisory pronouncements would be either ineffective political utterances or ex parte quasi-compulsory judgments rendered without the consent of a state principally concerned. The manner in which the JCJ's advisory function was exercised raises grave doubts regarding the “judicial” nature of that function, and more generally, the future role of the Court in clarifying the law and strengthening world order in the age of the global terrorist scourge.

Employing inapt analogies and formalistic, formulaic, and occasionally inconsistent reasoning, the Court evinced an unjudicial eagerness to furnish the General Assembly with the imprimatur it sought for its pre-set conclusions. The Court adopted a consistently unevenhanded posture that manifested itself, inter alia, in its embracing the assumptions and nomenclature of the Assembly resolution; ignoring the context of ongoing terrorism; minimizing the status of Israel as an objecting quasi-litigant while magnifying the role and rights of the Assembly; upholding questionable Assembly practices; presenting a sanitized and skewed version of the crucial factual and legal contexts; embracing a simplistic and Manichean view of the rights and obligations of the protagonists in conflicts bearing on self-determination; and unjustifiably restricting the Charter-affirmed inherent right of self-defense. In all this, it faithfully mirrored the perspective of the Assembly and proved itself, more patently than ever before, to be a Court of “UN Law” rather than of consensual international law. And to the extent that its “UN Law” perspective continues to spill over from the advisory to the contentious sphere, the process of “undeifying” the Court may gather strength.

This note deals with some of the procedural and substantive issues raised by the Legal Opinion rendered by International Court of Justice on the legality of the separation barrier. In the note it is argued that the motivations behind the General Assembly's request where political and not legal. It is contended that he partiality of the choice of the dossiers' material as submitted, issues relevant to propriety and the judicial character of the Court, should have led it to decline to give the requested opinion. The note is critical on the participation of Judge Elaraby, which the note argues affects the fairness and impartiality of the proceedings and affect the value of the Advisory Opinion. Israel did not consent to the exercise of jurisdiction by the Court. The problems inherent in the lack of relevant factual basis and in the fact-finding function of the Court, its total disregard of Israel's needs to protect its citizens against Palestinian terrorism, and the categorical and unmotivated rejection of Israel's security claims, led to an unbalanced and unjust result. Basic humanitarian law principles relating to the protection of civilians and international human rights are disregarded by the Court when it comes to the right to life of Israeli civilians and to their right to be protected against terror attacks. The note contends that the Court's denial of Israel's right to self-defense lacks legal and factual basis. The procedural and substantive deficiencies of the Advisory Opinion affect its value and persuasiveness.

This comment relates to a more universal aspect of the Wall opinion, asking whether the ICJ has promoted or undermined international law in its conduct, more particularly the legitimacy of the ICJ's advisory function. The comment argues that the Wall displays two conflicting tendencies in this respect. If one examines the opinion's procedural ‘inputs’ (even setting aside the issues of jurisdiction and propriety), the ICJ may have robbed the advisory procedure of some of its legitimacy by unfairly ignoring the case's contentious aspects on the procedural level. However, if one focuses on the opinion's ‘outputs’, it may have marked a significant, if imperfect, legitimate stage in the ongoing modernization of the ICJ, towards a supra-national, compulsory judiciary that allows a degree of effective access to non-state interests. Which of these evaluations will ultimately hold sway (or how they will weld together), remains to be seen.

The comment focuses on the construction of time in the normative regime of occupation. Beginning (in section 2) with a critique of the ICJ's reading of Article 6 of the Fourth Geneva Convention concerning the scope of applicability ratione temporis of the Convention in cases where the duration of an occupation lasts longer than one year, the comment proceeds (in section 3) to argue (a) that the gap between the working assumption informing Article 6 (of relatively short-term occupations) and reality (of prolonged occupations) defines a problem which the Court erroneously construed as a solution; (b) that the problem of prolonged occupation has allowed for the substitution of an indefinite for a temporary duration of an occupation, a move which defies the basic tenets of the normative regime of occupation; and (c) that a proper solution involves the construction of the notion of “reasonable time” into the Fourth Geneva Convention. The comment includes (in section 4) a proposal designed to minimize the temporary/indefinite blurring of boundaries in situations where an occupation has not ended within one year.

Comparison between the two decisions of the International Court of Justice and the Israeli Supreme Court on the legality of Israel's West Bank controversial separation barrier illustrates some of the inherent differences between national and international legal proceedings. The note critically assesses these differences and advocates a more comity based framework of cooperation between national and international courts. Specifically, the note argues that the fact-gathering and fact-analysis process demonstrated in the Hague Advisory Opinion is problematic, as were the Court's refusal to show any deference to the Israeli authorities and empathy towards the Israeli public. These deficiencies reduce the persuasiveness of the Opinion and render its acceptance by Israel less likely. At the same time, the failure of the Israeli Supreme Court to address the link between the route of the barrier and the alleged illegality of the settlement detracts from the normative value of the judgment and highlight the political constrains in which domestic courts operate. As a result, resort to a comity-based framework in which the national and international courts strive to draw upon each other's institutional advantages in the fields of fact-finding, compliance-pull and international law expertise would have been beneficial.

This paper examines the authority of the Military Commander to requisition privately owned land for the construction of the Separation Barrier within the West Bank, which is held through a regime of belligerent occupation. The examination focuses on Article 52 of the Hague Regulations, which deals with the issue of requisitions in kind. Moreover, the relationship between Articles 23(g) and 52 of the Hague Regulations is discussed, in light of the ICJ's decision whereas Article 23(g) is irrelevant after the close of active hostilities. This paper argues that while Article 52 grants the Military Commander the authority for such requisitions, Israel must demonstrate in each specific case that there a specific duty of the army of occupation which gives rise to a specific need of the army of occupation, in accordance with Article 52. The relevant decisions of the International Court of Justice and the Israeli High Court of Justice (HCJ) are examined, especially the High Court of Justice's Beit Sourik judgments and the International Court of Justice's Legal Consequences case.

In Beit Sourik the Israeli High Court of Justice struck down most of the planned route for the security fence to be established north of Jerusalem. The Court ruled that the military commander did not properly balance the contribution of this route to the security of the State and the extent of the injury to the rights of the Palestinian inhabitants of the area. It was therefore ruled that this route did not comply with the requirement of proportionality in its strict sense. At the same time, the Court rejected the claim of the petitioners that the motive underlying the determination of the fence's route was a desire to establish a border (a political consideration) and not a security consideration.

This article criticizes the Court's line of reasoning. I argue that the Court erred in striking down the planned route of the security fence on the ground of not fulfilling the requirement of proportionality in the strict sense. The vague nature of this requirement may cause judicial decisions to assume a subjective character, thus violating the democratic principle according to which fundamental decisions should be determined by the people's elected representatives. Given the suspicious circumstances that had led to the determination of the fence's route, the Court should have applied a different kind of reasoning. Instead of balancing the State's security issues and the Palestinians rights, the Court should have carefully scrutinized whether the security purpose was authentic. Judicial review, based on these premises, increases governmental transparency and thus better complies with democratic principles.

This paper argues that the ICJ did not need to discuss the legality of the settlements in order to examine the legality of the fence. Following this argument, until the settlement issue is resolved, Israel has an obligation to protect the settlers. Thus, even those parts of the fence that are intended to protect settlements, legality does not depend on the legality of the settlements. Moreover, this article argues that the Court's analysis of the settlements' legality is unsatisfactory: its interpretation of Article 49, paragraph 6, of the Fourth 1949 Geneva Convention, deviates to a certain extent, from the meaning of the same terms used in other paragraphs of Article 49, and as such a more in depth analysis by the Court was required.