1. Aharon Barak is an Israeli lawyer and jurist who served as President of the Supreme Court of Israel from 1995 to 2006.
23 Facts About Aharon Barak
1. 2.
Aharon Barak was born with the name of Erik Brick in Kaunas, Lithuania in 1936.
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Aharon Barak studied law, international relations and economics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and obtained his Bachelor of Laws in 1958.
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From 1974 to 1975, Aharon Barak was dean of the law faculty of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
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Aharon Barak is currently a law professor at Reichman University in Herzliya, and has taught at institutions including Yale Law School, Central European University, Georgetown University Law Center, and the University of Toronto Faculty of Law.
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Aharon Barak studied law, international relations and economics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and obtained his Bachelor of Laws in 1958.
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Aharon Barak is married to Elisheva Aharon Barak-Ussoskin, former vice president of the National Labor Court, with whom he has three daughters and a son, all trained in the law.
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Between 1975 and 1978, Aharon Barak served as the Attorney General of Israel.
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Aharon Barak was appointed by Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin in 1978 as the legal advisor to the Israeli delegation for negotiating the Camp David Accords.
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In 1993, with the retirement of the Deputy President of the Supreme Court Menachem Elon, Aharon Barak was appointed the Deputy President.
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Subsequently, with the retirement of the President Meir Shamgar on 13 August 1995, Aharon Barak was appointed the President of the Supreme Court.
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Aharon Barak canceled the standing test which Israel's Supreme Court had used frequently, and greatly expanded the scope of justiciability by allowing petitions on a range of matters.
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Judge Aharon Barak was the instigator and leader of the outlook which regards the traditional doctrine of justiciability as inappropriately and unnecessarily limiting the matters which the court deals with.
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Aharon Barak's critics have argued that, in doing so, the Supreme Court under his leadership harmed judicial consistency and stability, particularly in the private sector.
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Consequently, Aharon Barak held that the State of Israel has been transformed from a parliamentary democracy to a constitutional parliamentary democracy, in that its Basic Laws were to be interpreted as its constitution.
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Aharon Barak is the leading power in the court, as a key judge in it for a quarter of a century, and as the number 1 judge for some 10 years now.
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On 14 September 2006, upon reaching the mandatory age, Aharon Barak retired from the Supreme Court.
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Parallel to his service in the Supreme Court, Aharon Barak served as the head of a committee which, for some twenty years, drafted the Israeli Civil Codex, which worked to unite the 24 main civil law statutes in Israeli law under a single comprehensive law.
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On June 5,2024, Aharon Barak resigned from his role as an ad hoc judge, citing personal reasons.
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Aharon Barak championed a proactive judiciary that has interpreted Israel's Basic Law as its constitution, and challenged Knesset laws on that basis.
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In practice, in many respects the Supreme Court under Aharon Barak has become an alternate government.
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Aharon Barak is a secular Jew but believes in compromise with the religious sector, and state support for religion.
23.
Aharon Barak suggested that if there were a Nobel Prize for law, Barak would likely be among its early recipients.