Judgment in Jerusalem; Chief Justice Simon Agranat and the Zionist Century

Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1997. First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. xvii, [1], 331, [1] pages. Illustrations. Notes. Glossary. Index. Table of Cases. During the course of her legal career, Pnina Lahav has published nearly 50 journal articles and three books, including the critically acclaimed Judgment in Jerusalem: Chief Justice Simon Agranat and the Zionist Century. Winner of Israel's Seltner Award and the Gratz College Centennial Book Award, she is presently completing a biography of Israel's fourth prime minister, Golda Meir, a biography that asks how a lone woman surrounded by men makes it to the top. Among the prestigious research fellowships that Professor Lahav has earned are a fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation, a fellowship at the Stanford Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and a fellowship from the Center for Advanced Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Professor Lahav delivered several endowed lectures, including the Lapidus Lecture at Princeton University in March 2015, the Rockoff Lecture at Rutgers University in March 2017 and the Taubman Lecture at the University of California in Santa Barbara in November 2017. Simon Agranat was the third chief justice of the Israeli Supreme Court and a founding father of Israeli law. Agranat brought U.S. progressivism and constitutionalism to Israeli legal soil. Agranat laid the foundation for Israel's bill of rights and took part in nearly every important Israeli legal and political issue of the century. Lahav's study of Agranat portrays Israeli history through the lens of judicial opinions. It is based on her interviews with the justice and a close examination of his papers. A major theme is the relationship between Agranat's world view and landmark Israeli Supreme Court opinions, and she tells the story of a visionary jurist and an American pursuing his Zionist dream. Here is an illuminating view of Israeli history and legal culture that includes the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Holocaust, the symbiosis between religion and the Jewish state, and the tensions within Zionism itself. Lahav details the thinking behind Agranat's 1962 decision to convict Eichmann and the justice's dissent in the "Who Is a Jew?" case in 1970. This is a key biography of Agranat who made the geographical and psychological journey from the U. S. to Israel. This book provides insights into Israeli law and politics and into the processes that form a national identity.