World Law School Begins Work On Formulating Israeli Codes

After less than a year of planning the Law School's World School of Law Program has made a successful start on its first large research project. Associate Dean David F. Cavers announced this week.

The Harvard Law School Research in Aid of Israel's Legal Development is a cooperative research project between Harvard and the Israeli Ministry of Justice. The idea was born last spring when Uri Yadin of the Israell Ministry of Justice visited Cambridge and spoke to several faculty members about the handicap imposed an adequate legal system. At present Israel's law is a mixture derived from Turkish, English Arabic, and Hebrew codes, and there are many serious gaps to be called in addition to many archaic laws which must be revised.

Selectivity

In order to adopt the best possible legal system, the Israeli Government had to study the codes of established governments and then selectively adapt these procedures to their own state. But the only place where that legal research could be done was at Harvard's 750,000 volume law library.

Over the next few months the machinery of the plan was set up, and a director chosen for the project. German-born Joseph Laufer, a former Department of Justice lawyer who has a reading or speaking knowledge of eight foreign languages, began work on the codification process last month.

Laufer's first project is an examination and revision of the Israeli laws on wills and cases where no will is left. For under the old Turkish law which still stands, most land in Israel cannot be handed on the will. The case is also an opportunity to test out comparative legal science.

One of the other serious problems Laufer will have to face is a revision of the trial system. The British government, imposed the traditional English rules of evidence which were designed largely to meet the needs of jury trials, but did not introduce to Israel the jury system itself.

At present Laufer has only one assistant, a graduate student who is also general counsel to the Israeli Finance Ministry.