UAlbany Awards Honorary Degree to Aharon Barak, President of Israeli Supreme Court

By Lisa James Goldsberry

The University at Albany presented an honorary Doctor of Laws degree to Israeli jurist and scholar Aharon Barak, president of the Supreme Court of Israel, on Tuesday, Oct. 3. The honorary degree convocation took place in the Campus Center Ballroom on UAlbany's Uptown Campus.

A seminar was also held where Barak addressed students and faculty of the Judaic Studies program. Both events were part of the 30th anniversary celebration of UAlbany's Department of Judaic Studies.

Barak has achieved an international standing as one of the leading jurists of our time. His influential legal publications have earned him respect and admiration from legal scholars everywhere. His book, Judicial Discretion (Yale University Press, 1989) has been translated into several languages. He is seen as the driving force behind the independence of the Israeli Supreme Court and the establishment of American style judicial review into Israeli common law.

Since his appointment as a Supreme Court justice in 1978, Barak helped shape Israel's constitutional and commercial laws. In 1983, he was appointed the court's Deputy President and two years later its President.

Prior to his appointment to the Supreme Court, he served as Israel's Attorney General and as a key foreign affairs advisor to Prime Minister Menachem Begin. He played a major role as the Israeli legal advisor during the final discussions at Camp David, which led to the 1979 signing of the Egytpian-Israeli peace agreement. In addition to his public service duties, Barak teaches seminars on constitutional law at the law schools of both Yale and Harvard Universities.

"The University at Albany is delighted and honored to recognize President Aharon Barak for his extraordinary achievements in, and contributions to, the areas of jurisprudence, international affairs, government, and teaching and scholarship," said University President Karen R. Hitchcock. "As president, he has not only strengthened the authority and prestige of the Supreme Court, but he has exercised uncommon leadership and breadth of vision at the forefront of the broad social movement to create a more open Jewish society and a more modern political Israeli state."

Born in Lithuania in 1936, Barak and his parents moved to Israel in 1947. He studied at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, where he earned an undergraduate degree in law, economics and international relations as well as a Masters of Arts in law in 1958 and a doctorate in 1963. He became a full professor of Law at Hebrew University in 1972 and two years later was appointed Dean of the Law Faculty. In addition to winning the Kaplan prize for excellence in science and research, as well as the Israeli Prize in legal sciences, he is a member of the Israeli Academy of Sciences.

"Chief Justice Barak has led the Supreme Court to take a more active role in protecting human rights, even when that portends a change in the place that the Jewish religion plays in Israeli society," said Martin Edelman, a professor of political science at UAlbany.

Other plans to celebrate the anniversary include an open invitation to community members to audit the fall courses of the Judaic Studies Department, and a monthly Judaic Studies Lunch-and-Learn Series.