Constitutional Law  

Constitutional Law establishes the basic structure of the regime by creating and regulating the state’s governmental institutions. It also regulates the relations between the state and individuals through the protection of human rights. In the first half of the course we will learn about the elaboration of the Israeli constitutional system, the institutions of government and the relations among them. In the second half of the course we will learn about the protection of human rights in constitutional law. Throughout the course we will draw comparisons with other constitutional regimes, democratic and autocratic. We will discuss tensions present in Israeli constitutional law as in many democratic regimes, such as the tension between formal and constitutional democracy, as well as the special tensions present in Israeli constitutional law such as the tension between democracy and the ethnic nature of the state.