UNIVERSITY OF HAIFA – FACULTY OF LAW
Yosseph M. Edrey, University of Haifa, Israel
A. A Brief Introduction to the Legal System and
Legal Education in Israel
Israel has witnessed in the recent decade a growing demand from students for legal education. This demand was fueled in part by the rising need for lawyers due to high growth rates of the Israeli economy since the beginning of the Mid-East peace process, and also to a trend, similar to that of other western countries, toward greater litigiousness in the Israeli society.
The Israeli legal education scene features four faculties of law within the following semi-public universities: Hebrew University of Jerusalem (faculty of law established in 1949), Tel Aviv University (faculty of law established in 1967), Bar-Ilan University (faculty of law established in 1970) and University of Haifa (faculty of law established in 1992).
All Faculties of Law offer LL.B. programs. Three of them also have post-graduate programs. The post-graduate program of the Faculty of Law at the University of Haifa is now in the final stages of approval. Two doctorate students are already studying at the University of Haifa Faculty of Law towards their Ph.D. in law.
In addition, there are five private colleges of law.
This paper will focus on the LL.B. program offered at the Faculty of Law of the University of Haifa.
The historic background of the country has largely influenced Israel’s legal system.
Until 1917, the area of modern Israel was ruled by the Ottoman Empire, and local law was Ottoman law – a legal system Continental by nature, with some Muslim characteristics. After World War I and until 1948, the country was under British Mandate. At the very early stage, the British left the Ottoman law intact, and progressively introduced British Common Law.
When the State of Israel gained independence in 1948, the Israeli Government left British Common Law intact and what remained of Ottoman Law as the governing law, and gradually replaced them over the years with Israeli law.
Today, the Israeli legal system is best described as a mixed system, belonging to the Western family of legal systems, incorporating characteristics of Common Law, Continental Law and Jewish Law:
·
Common Law influence can be found in tort law; criminal
law; civil and criminal procedure; evidence law; corporate law and adoption of
the adversary method for seeking truth.
Originally, the strongest influence was that of English Common Law. However, as years progressed, the influence
of American Common Law became predominant.
This was mainly due to the fact that some of the leading jurists of the
country had an American background (most of the academicians prefer to get
their JSD or Ph.D. in the U.S.A), and also to the special political, cultural
and economic ties forged between Israel and the U.S.A.
· Continental Law influence can be found in the rejection of the jury system, the civil body of laws (e.g. contracts, property) and incorporation of the requirement of bona fides.
· Israeli heritage is, according to the Legal Sources Law (1980), one of the formal sources of the Israeli legal system. The full meaning of this expression is still unclear. Some scholars argue that it should be interpreted as a reference to Jewish Law.
· Religious law (Jewish, Muslim or Christian – depending on the parties involved) governs matrimonial matters.
· The Israeli constitutional law, too, was shaped by various legal systems: the strongest influence was that of American and Canadian constitutional law. However, since Israel is considered a welfare state, the last decade has also witnessed a growing influence of German constitutional law.
The Israel Bar Association Law (1961) regulates the practice of law in the country. According to this law, the cumulative prerequisites for obtaining a permit for practicing law are: completion of legal studies in one of the law faculties of the four universities in Israel; legal training supervised by a lawyer or a judge for one year; and passing the Israel Bar, both oral and written examinations. In response to the growing demand for legal education, a 1991 amendment to the Israel Bar Association Law enabled the establishment of private legal colleges alongside the four existing faculties of law. Today, five such colleges operate, and their graduates are eligible to practice law after completing the above requirements.
Special rules apply to prerequisites for those Israeli citizens, including new immigrants, who got their legal education overseas.
Since the University of Haifa Faculty of Law was established less than 10 years ago, it may be characterized as the most dynamic and innovative law faculty in the country.
The Israeli system demands that all faculty members with tenure, or those on a tenure track, must hold a post-graduate degree (Ph.D. or SJD.).
The status and role of legal academicians at Israeli law schools stands somewhere between the Continental legal system and the Anglo-American one. While having an important influence on the way Israeli courts construe and develop the law, their influence does not reach the level of Doctrine which dominates the Continental system. The positive relationship between legal academicians and the court system is also symbolized by the fact that some of the leading professors are appointed, at a later stage, to the Supreme Court [Chief Justice Barak, (Head of the Steering Committee of University of Haifa Faculty of Law); Deputy Chief Justice (Ret.) Elon; Justice Zamir (the founding Dean of University of Haifa Faculty of Law); and Justice Engelrad].
Over 50% of the faculty members at Haifa hold SJD degrees from leading overseas universities such as Harvard, N.Y.U., Yale, Oxford, Toronto and Stanford.
The law school is still going through a process of recruiting new faculty. The recruitment process is based on identifying outstanding students graduating from the four faculties of law in Israel and sending them abroad with partial funding from the University for advanced studies (usually to the U.S.A. or England). Those completing their studies summa cum laude with high recommendations from their teachers are then offered a tenure track at the University of Haifa. In addition, some senior academicians leaders in the field [Prof. Ben-Oliel (banking law), Prof. Carmi (medicine law), Prof. Merony (labor law and ADR) and Prof. Edrey (taxation law)], have left other academic institutions in order to join the faculty at Haifa law school.
Most of the faculty is interdisciplinary by nature, with formal education in a field other than law: law and economics; law and computer sciences; law and finance; law and psychology. Interdisciplinarity, as explained below, is a unique and important aspect of the curriculum at the University of Haifa Faculty of Law. The majority of the faculty have a preference for the critical study of law (C.L.S.) approach for teaching and research over the more traditional black letter law approach.
Law students in the LL.B. program in the University of Haifa Faculty of Law are all full-time, undergraduate students.
The total number of first year students is 180. The students are selected according to an entrance score calculated as a mean between the results of their high school matriculation tests and their University Entrance Psychometric Test (both constitute a requirement for entering any department at the University). Students with a prior academic degree may substitute their matriculation test results with their university degree average. As a general rule, the single criterion for selection is this entrance score: only students with the highest score are admitted. The same applies for all the law faculties in the country.
While this being the rule, there are, however, two exceptions: the first is that selection of applicants with a prior Ph.D. degree is done through an admissions committee which admits up to five students. The second exception is that the Faculty of Law at the University of Haifa, in an experiment unique to it alone, has allowed, in the past two years, the admission of seven students each year on the basis of affirmative action criteria (as opposed to the entrance score).
The curriculum is based on a three-and-a-half-year study program. The Faculty Council autonomously defines the curriculum content. The only constraint in this regard is the Israeli law that requires to include a course on legal ethics.
The University of Haifa Faculty of Law stresses, both in its curriculum and in the recruitment of its faculty, the following legal subjects:
- Intellectual property and technology law
- Business law
- International trade
“Classical” subjects, such as torts, public law, contracts, property law, legal procedure, criminal law, evidence law and others are of course not neglected.
The general approach in Israel, which was initiated by the Hebrew University (modeled after the European approach) and later adopted by other faculties of law, is that applicants to LL.B. programs do not need a prior academic degree or college education as a prerequisite. As noted earlier, the students are admitted (as in all other B.A. programs in the country) after completing their high school education. High school education in Israel offers a general education to students, but does not reach the level of a college education.
The Faculty of Law in the University of Haifa finds this approach to be disadvantageous: students studying law without an undergraduate education are in danger of becoming narrow-minded legalists. This feeling is shared by all faculty members in Haifa in view of their previous experience as teachers or students at American law schools. Hence a few measures were taken in order to change this approach:
· The following mandatory non-legal courses are offered: Introduction to Economics; The History of the Western Legal Systems & Societies; Introduction to Sociology; Introduction to Political Philosophy. Other non-legal elective courses that are offered are Introduction to Finance; Introduction to Accounting; Global Economy; Introduction to Public Administration.
· Allowing students to take up to 20 credits of non-legal electives.
· Dual Degree Programs: students joining these programs study, along with their LL.B. studies, towards one of the following degrees: Computer Sciences, Psychology, Medicine, or Economics. The Faculty of Law is now preparing a Dual Degree Program with the Department of Biotechnology and Evolution at the University of Haifa aimed at law students wishing to specialize in patents and IP law. Studies in the Dual Degree Programs are strenuous and demanding, but the effort is worthwhile: students enter the job market with qualifications high in demand. The growing number of students joining this program shows that students appreciate these benefits. Moreover, the Faculty of Law at the University of Haifa also sees the program as a potential source of future faculty candidates. The dual degree program is a unique aspect of the curriculum at the University of Haifa Faculty of Law, a product of cooperation among different departments at the University. This will surely be followed by other law faculties in the country.
· Students who prefer not to burden themselves with studying towards two degrees at the same time may specialize instead in one of the following clusters of courses in addition to their LL.B studies: Philosophy, Business Administration, Public Administration, Behavioral Science, History, Jewish Studies, Law & Technology, and Medical Law.
· The Faculty of Law at the University of Haifa was a pioneer in decreasing the number of mandatory courses while increasing, at the same time, the number of electives offered. In recent years the law faculties of Bar-Ilan University and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem have followed suit.
· As part of the mandatory courses, first year students in the Haifa Faculty of Law take the basic course on Legal Reasoning of the Israeli Legal System. The course, which is taught by the entire faculty, utilizes a tutorial approach and is characterized by small study groups.
· The Faculty of Law at the University of Haifa which encourages and supports its multi-cultural student body, offers the following courses that focus on the Arab minority in Israel: Muslim Law, Contemporary Issues in Islam, Human Rights in Islam, and Arab Minority in Israel Law.
Students join the LL.B. program with the aim of becoming lawyers. Over 90% of the graduates at the University of Haifa Faculty of Law take the bar exam (after completing a one-year internship as required by law). However, at a later stage, only 50%-60% of the graduates actually involve themselves in practicing law. The rest turn to business, hi-tech, NGOs, and a small percentage continues in academia.
The Faculty of Law at the University of Haifa is planning several programs which will demonstrate the uniqueness of the institution:
One) As part of the Mid-East peace process and the bright prospects for growing integration of the peoples in the region, two programs have been planned and are under implementation:
- An LL.M. program, jointly developed with an American university, which will focus on Mid-East international trade. The target students for this program are American/European students who wish to engage in legal activities in the Mid-East, and to this end wish to study the legal, economic and cultural environment of the region. Also targeted are students from Israel and other Mid-East countries who wish to study international trade law.
- A research institute which will study economics and legal problems of the Middle East with the aim of proposing a basis for the institution of a Mid-East Common Market.
Two) A special LL.M. program for judges is currently being developed. Its main purpose is to expose the judges-students to the interdisciplinary approach.
Three) A multi-interdisciplinary center for A.D.R. and Negotiation is also being developed by the Faculty of Law in cooperation with the Departments of Psychology, Communication, Sociology, and Political Science at the University of Haifa.
Four) A special effort is being made in order to establish a national council of ethics, headed by two members of Faculty of Law at the University of Haifa.