Menachem Mautner, LAW AND THE CULTURE OF ISRAEL Oxford: Oxford University Press (www.oup.com), 2011. x + 267 pp. ISBN 9780199600564. £34.95.

Document Cited in Related
AuthorAdam Hofri-Winogradow
DOI10.3366/elr.2012.0088
Published date01 January 2012
Date01 January 2012
Pages125-126

Menachem Mautner is a pivotal figure in the history of the Israeli legal academy: long a popular contracts scholar and teacher, Mautner has since the early 1990s gradually transformed himself into a leading socio-legal theorist. Mautner's personal transformation is emblematic of a larger paradigm shift in Israeli legal academia, from formalist, doctrinal legal studies, which were the leading idiom of juristic study for decades and, until the 1990s, to the study of law – both in books and in action – by way of economics, history and various social sciences, which has increasingly become the new leading idiom of Israeli legal studies. Mautner's 1992 book, The Decline of Formalism and Rise of Values in Israeli Law, was a principal harbinger of this shift; the book's subject matter was a similar paradigm shift in Israeli case law, from technical, deductive techniques to a naked weighing of the competing values relevant to each case. Both the transformation in judicial technique and its later academic echo emulated similar transformations which had earlier taken place in the United States.

Mautner's current book, Law and the Culture of Israel, condenses twenty years’ worth of publications into 226 pages. Subjects Mautner has discussed at great length in Hebrew are here discussed in brief. The book thus reflects, in a relatively restricted space, the many dimensions of Mautner's thought, including social and political theory (focusing on different versions of liberalism and the...

Get this document and AI-powered insights with a free trial of vLex and Vincent AI

Get Started for Free

Start Your Free Trial of vLex and Vincent AI, Your Precision-Engineered Legal Assistant

  • Access comprehensive legal content with no limitations across vLex's unparalleled global legal database

  • Build stronger arguments with verified citations and CERT citator that tracks case history and precedential strength

  • Transform your legal research from hours to minutes with Vincent AI's intelligent search and analysis capabilities

  • Elevate your practice by focusing your expertise where it matters most while Vincent handles the heavy lifting

vLex

Start Your Free Trial of vLex and Vincent AI, Your Precision-Engineered Legal Assistant

  • Access comprehensive legal content with no limitations across vLex's unparalleled global legal database

  • Build stronger arguments with verified citations and CERT citator that tracks case history and precedential strength

  • Transform your legal research from hours to minutes with Vincent AI's intelligent search and analysis capabilities

  • Elevate your practice by focusing your expertise where it matters most while Vincent handles the heavy lifting

vLex

Start Your Free Trial of vLex and Vincent AI, Your Precision-Engineered Legal Assistant

  • Access comprehensive legal content with no limitations across vLex's unparalleled global legal database

  • Build stronger arguments with verified citations and CERT citator that tracks case history and precedential strength

  • Transform your legal research from hours to minutes with Vincent AI's intelligent search and analysis capabilities

  • Elevate your practice by focusing your expertise where it matters most while Vincent handles the heavy lifting

vLex

Start Your Free Trial of vLex and Vincent AI, Your Precision-Engineered Legal Assistant

  • Access comprehensive legal content with no limitations across vLex's unparalleled global legal database

  • Build stronger arguments with verified citations and CERT citator that tracks case history and precedential strength

  • Transform your legal research from hours to minutes with Vincent AI's intelligent search and analysis capabilities

  • Elevate your practice by focusing your expertise where it matters most while Vincent handles the heavy lifting

vLex

Start Your Free Trial of vLex and Vincent AI, Your Precision-Engineered Legal Assistant

  • Access comprehensive legal content with no limitations across vLex's unparalleled global legal database

  • Build stronger arguments with verified citations and CERT citator that tracks case history and precedential strength

  • Transform your legal research from hours to minutes with Vincent AI's intelligent search and analysis capabilities

  • Elevate your practice by focusing your expertise where it matters most while Vincent handles the heavy lifting

vLex

Start Your Free Trial of vLex and Vincent AI, Your Precision-Engineered Legal Assistant

  • Access comprehensive legal content with no limitations across vLex's unparalleled global legal database

  • Build stronger arguments with verified citations and CERT citator that tracks case history and precedential strength

  • Transform your legal research from hours to minutes with Vincent AI's intelligent search and analysis capabilities

  • Elevate your practice by focusing your expertise where it matters most while Vincent handles the heavy lifting

vLex

Start Your Free Trial of vLex and Vincent AI, Your Precision-Engineered Legal Assistant

  • Access comprehensive legal content with no limitations across vLex's unparalleled global legal database

  • Build stronger arguments with verified citations and CERT citator that tracks case history and precedential strength

  • Transform your legal research from hours to minutes with Vincent AI's intelligent search and analysis capabilities

  • Elevate your practice by focusing your expertise where it matters most while Vincent handles the heavy lifting

vLex