Israeli Legal System and Precedents

Israeli legal system and precedents
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Introduction
In the Israeli legal system, the judges create precedent especially in case law decisions in comparison to the civil law system. At the same time, the judges are typically not bound by the factors of a case, meaning that they exercise more power than the common law judges. The Israeli legal system borrows both elements of Common law ordinarily found in countries that adopt some forms of the UK legal system including the US, but it also incorporates elements of Case law typically adopted by Continental Europe. This paper focuses on the way the Israeli system uses precedents, it also compares how this differs for the US Supreme Court use of precedents, and the likely impact of precedents on the Israeli policy making.
Israeli legal system vs. US use of precedent
The blended legal system allows the Israeli Supreme Court judges to pass judgment on a wider scale. At same time, the judges have the discretion to give rulings based on deductive reasoning. One of the peculiar elements is the Israeli legal structure is that the case laws of a court guide the lower courts including the supreme court rulings which guide the lower court, but the lower courts are not necessarily bound by the rulings. There are panels in the Supreme Court which hear cases, and none of the panels is obligated to follow the rulings of another panel. In any case, the different panels at the Israeli Court system, which are mostly 3 panels, hasten the hearing process unlike the US where the panel of judges is fixed. In Israel, the lower courts merely uses the guidance of the higher courts, unlike in the US where the Supreme Court decisions bind the lower courts setting precedent as is common in many jurisdictions following common law.
Even though, judges in the US and Israeli give their opinions on why to support or reject the decisions on whether a statute is constitutional, the Israeli system gives the judges the power to give their opinion providing more details related to their decisions. The Israeli judges can provide decisions and opinions separately even when they agree on an outcome, but this creates confusion on the status of stare decisis. In other words, the lengthy opinions mean that it is complicated to identify the binding legal rules, while the judges in the US Supreme Court typically provide brief statements on the rules and basis of their opinions.
Israeli Supreme Court’s structure and use of precedent vs. the US
The Israeli Supreme Court hears civil and criminal case appeals from the lower courts, and the defense and prosecution can both present appeals. This differs from the US system which uses the double jeopardy clause like other common law jurisdictions, and this avoids prosecution more than once for the same crime in a state court....