Tag: law

Seminar on law and justice

Congregation Beth Israel Rabbi Jonathan Infeld, right, and Howard Mickelson, QC, receive the Schechter Haggadah from the president of the Schechter Institute, Prof. David Golinkin, at the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem. (photo by Linda Price)

A group of 20 lawyers and judges from Canada visited Israel for a five-day Law and Justice seminar at the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem. Meeting with some of their Israeli counterparts, participants immersed themselves in the topics of Maintaining Security, Rule of Law, Democracy and the Jewish Way of Life.

Mission delegates participated in a reception at the Rooftop Restaurant, Mamilla Hotel, followed by a talk by the Hon. Justice Dalia Dorner, former Israeli Supreme Court justice. Mission delegates, several of whom are not Jewish, heard Dorner’s explanation of the special character of Israel, which is both a Jewish and democratic state. She said, “Israel must unite both of these values. Indeed, certain Jewish values are very compatible with democracy. Furthermore, the founding fathers of Israel chose freedom, justice and peace as the basic values upon which the state is founded, and no one can change this.”

The next day, the jurists met with Justice Elyakim Rubinstein, vice-president of Israel’s Supreme Court and former attorney general. They also toured the award-winning building. Rubinstein explained the uniqueness of Israel’s Supreme Court and how it differs from those of other Western countries. He also discussed topical issues such as the appointment of Supreme Court justices and the proposed Regulation Law.

Afterwards, delegates traveled to the Ministry of Justice in East Jerusalem and met with Israel State Attorney Shai Nitzan, who spoke about the difficulties of safeguarding human rights during times of war and insecurity.

photo - Members of the group at the Neve Schechter in Tel Aviv
Members of the group at the Neve Schechter in Tel Aviv. (photo by Linda Price)

On the Thursday, Ambassador Efraim Halevy, the ninth director of Mossad, who was born in England, gave a talk on the interrelationship between Israel, the United States and Russia, and each country’s interest in the Middle East. Halevy said, “Israel cannot be destroyed” and that “Iran never was and cannot be an existential threat to the state of Israel. There is no state or entity that represents an existential threat to the state of Israel.”

On Friday afternoon, delegates visited the Neve Schechter Centre for Jewish Culture in Neve Zedek, Tel Aviv, and heard several lectures. Prof. Gideon Sapir from the faculty of law, Bar-Ilan University, and a candidate for the position of Supreme Court justice, gave a lecture explaining the issues of Israel’s “blue laws.” He noted the quandary of employing workers on the Sabbath in Israel and creative legal solutions to this dilemma, which counterbalances two values: one Jewish – the right to a day of rest; and the other democratic – the basic right to freedom of employment.

The mission was the initiative of Rabbi Jonathan Infeld of Vancouver’s Congregation Beth Israel and one of his congregants, attorney Howard A. Mickelson, QC. A group of Jewish and non-Jewish lawyers meets regularly in Vancouver, in a Law and Learn program for lawyers that deals with contemporary issues in civil law, bringing in guest lecturers. A Jewish law component is added to each session by Infeld.

Because of Infeld’s long-term connection to the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies, Schechter was chosen to lead the mission and to implement the study program. The mission’s goal was to enable a group of Canadian leaders to study, up close, the social, military and political issues facing Israel as a democratic and Jewish state, both from a general legal and a specific Jewish legal/religious standpoint.

Radical innovation requires changes to law

Left to right: Bo Rothstein, CFHU Vancouver president Randy Milner, Prof. Michal Shur-Ofry and Justice Bruce Cohen. (photo by Michelle Dodek)

The main boardroom at Farris was full of lawyers who had come to hear Prof. Michal Shur-Ofry of the law faculty at Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The Oct. 6 event began with a brief presentation by University of British Columbia law professor Christie Ford on her experience at Hebrew University in the spring as part of the Mitchell Gropper Law Faculty Professorship Exchange. Bo Rothstein, a partner at Farris, gave a warm welcome and introduced the keynote speaker, an internationally recognized expert in intellectual property (IP).

Shur-Ofry’s lecture was titled From Newton to Shechtman: Can Intellectual Property Facilitate Nonlinear Innovation? She told the story of Dr. Dan Shechtman, an Israeli researcher who observed “quasicrystals” in 1982, a discovery that scientists were convinced was impossible; Shechtman nearly lost his career as a result of publishing his findings. In 2011, however, he was vindicated when he was awarded a Nobel Prize in chemistry for this discovery. The dramatic story of this Israeli Nobel laureate illustrates aspects of nonlinear innovation, those that shift existing paradigms.

Another example of such a paradigm shift, said Shur-Ofry, was the introduction of cubism by the artists Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. Their movement away from the representational depictions that had previously dominated art was at first ridiculed. Once accepted, however, their innovative contributions became a crucial building block of 20th-century art and beyond.

The world is currently biased against radical innovators, Shur-Ofry maintained, but she believes that “a de-biasing mechanism” is possible through IP law. This area of law, which encompasses copyright and patent law, can help artists, scientists and other innovators to be brave and to contribute their novel innovations without the kinds of risk taken by the Picassos or Shechtmans, she said.

“If an artist first sells a piece for just $900, and then it is resold for $85,000, the artist is entitled to a share of that sale price.”

Citing droit de suite, a law adopted by the European Union and 70 other countries that gives artists protection by entitling them to part of the proceeds of subsequent sales of their art, Shur-Ofry explained by way of example, “If an artist first sells a piece for just $900, and then it is resold for $85,000, the artist is entitled to a share of that sale price.” She acknowledged that while this type of remuneration exacts a cost on doing business, its benefit to artists who are innovators can drive others to produce novel works, instead of commercially proven, formulaic art.

It is this type of law, along with other incentives to inventors, that Shur-Ofry champions. She described patent laws that would grant access to the successful results of works protected through patents, as well as the “negative knowledge” that results in even greater innovation and discovery. Great problems are often solved by discovering an error in the paradigm, she explained. Therefore, access to the challenges and roadblocks in developing technologies may be the key to solving even greater problems. She said that she hopes to convince lawmakers that changing IP laws will encourage non-linear innovation and be universally beneficial.

The Mitchell Gropper Law Faculty Professorship Exchange facilitates annual exchange between Hebrew University and UBC law professors, and enables annual lectures by visiting Hebrew University law professors. For more information about the exchange or the programming of CFHU in Vancouver, visit cfhu.org or contact executive director Dina Wachtel at 604-257-5133.