Abstract:

The honorable Aharon Barak is the former President of the Supreme Court of Israel,credited as “the most influential Justice Israel has ever known”. As an honored speaker for the Hugo L. Black Lecture on Freedom of Expression at Wesleyan University, President Barak will explore the interrelationship between the freedom of speech and human dignity in a democratic society. However, because the United States and Israel differ dramatically with regard to both their governmental structure and also their conceptualizations of the democratic principle of free speech, this essay seeks to provide a framework with which to develop a working understanding of Israeli free speech jurisprudence. By first describing Israel’s constitutional model and the nature of the rights protected by it, the essay will ground Barak’s interpretations of free speech and human dignity in the context of Israeli law. Emphasis is placed on Barak’s method of judicial analysis and how it is applied to issues of free speech.