The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #129840   Message #2925786
Posted By: beardedbruce
11-Jun-10 - 06:17 PM
Thread Name: BS: New Israeli atrocity: attack on Gaza aid
Subject: RE: BS: New Israeli atrocity: attack on Gaza aid
CarolC: "As far as I know, Israel does not have a constitution."
Partially correct:

The Basic Laws of Israel (Hebrew: חוקי היסוד‎, ḥŭḳḳēi ha-yyǝsōd) are a key component of Israel's constitutional law. These laws deal with the formation and role of the principal state's institutions, and the relations between the state's authorities. Some of them also protect civil rights. While these laws were originally meant to be draft chapters of a future Israeli constitution, they are already used on a daily basis by the courts as a formal constitution. Israel currently functions according to an unwritten constitution consisting of both material constitutional law, based upon cases and precedents, and the provisions of these formal statutes. As of today, the Basic Laws do not cover all constitutional issues, and there is no deadline set to the completion of the process of merging them into one comprehensive constitution. There is no clear rule determining the precedence of Basic Rules over regular legislation, and in many cases this issue is left to the interpretation of the jurisdictional system.