Faculty of Law

As I watched the heroic battle of Hanukkah re-enacted by my son and his peers, I received a better understanding of my son’s apparent altruistic motives: onto the stage marched the brave Jewish warriors, dressed in “traditional” Hashmonai garments: a shtreimel, a kapota, and shining tzitzit. Then came the Greeks – along with my son – dressed in shimmering armour, glamorous helmets, waving magnificent swords and riding fearless horses (not real ones, the budget of the school was limited to fake ones). The mother seated next to me leaned towards me and whispered: “my son was chosen to be a Hashmonai. He cried non-stop for three days. Finally, I called the teacher and begged her to let him be a Greek; he wanted the horse ...”

This article draws attention to the significance of rights-talk in shaping proper abortion legislation. It engages with ongoing debates regarding the wisdom of Roe v. Wade’s judicially-imposed, strict rights-based approach to legal abortion. As the issue of abortion remains extremely controversial in American politics, it has been argued that the Court’s rights-based rhetoric, coupled with the ‘’undemocratic’' judicial imposition of a resolution to the issue of abortion, played a central role in triggering the ongoing conflict over abortions. Legal scholars often rely on comparative examples in an attempt to argue in favor of legislative and conciliatory policy solutions to the issue of abortion.
The article questions the superiority of legislative solutions to abortion by providing a critical comparative account of abortion legislation that seems to exemplify precisely the sort of compromise-based solution advocated by critics of Roe v. Wade’s judicially created right to abortion. It critically analyzes the give-and-take process in the Israeli legislature which gave birth to the country's abortion law. The article argues that the Israeli case study provides a cautionary tale of a legal system in which the issue of abortion regulation was left to be decided exclusively by legislators, rather than judges, which resulted in legislation that is devoid of any concept of individual rights.
The article concludes by exploring a number of additional comparative examples outside of Israel. Focusing specifically on Canada, Germany and France, it highlights the manner in which a broad comparative perspective is useful in drawing attention to the role of courts and legislatures in shaping abortion policies, as well as to the disguised costs of abortion compromises.

This article questions the sufficiency of contemporary parental policies in undermining the gendered division of care-work at home. It reveals that despite the optimistic expectations that accompanied the enactment of gender-neutral leave legislation such as the FMLA, and the provision of equal care opportunities for men, a marked gap separates the law's target of equal parenting from the persistence of a maternal reality in most families. Moreover, because women remain responsible for family caregiving much more than men, the stereotype that women are less competent workers continues to thrive, and gender bias and discrimination still shape women's experiences in the workplace. This discriminatory reality is often masked by legal narratives presenting the rise of egalitarian and choice-based patterns of parenting as actual products of contemporary parental policies. Gendered patterns of care and work are thus legitimized as reflecting the individual lifestyle preferences of both women and men in a world in which equality and choice shape these preferences.
The article suggests naming this problem “the maternal dilemma” and calls for re-evaluation of current male-centered policy solutions designed to address it by encouraging men to assume more care-taking responsibilities at home. It adds a comparative analysis to illustrate that the maternal dilemma is not a unique American problem, with its very “thin” model of parental supports, restricted to narrow and primarily negative protections. The maternal dilemma prevails also under more progressive regimes of parental supports that provide additional incentives for men to assume greater care-taking responsibilities at home.
Building on comparative lessons as well as on the scope and significance of the maternal dilemma in the American context, the article argues that in their efforts to recruit men to the task of care-taking at home, feminists, legislators and policy makers have neglected an additional and equally important set of issues relating to the structures and forces that shape women's decision to remain the primary caretakers at home.In deliberating these issues the article suggests acknowledging that gendered patterns of care-work at home are not simply the product of women’s subordination. They also reflect the complex relationship between women’s disempowering experience in the labor market and the historical and contemporary significance of motherhood in their lives. Restoring the focus to women and addressing their specific needs and concerns are thus crucial for moving forward. Naming this problem the maternal dilemma serves as a reminder of where the core of the problem is; it also signals that the path to gender equality might require more than gender-neutrality and similar treatment.

Copyright law in recent years has undergone a process of privatization. While weakening the enforceability of conventional legislation (copyright rules), cyberspace facilitates alternative types of regulation such as contracts and technical self-help measures. Regulation by the code is significantly different from traditional types of public ordering (copyright law) and private ordering (contracts). Norms that technically regulate the use of information are not merely self-made they are also self-enforced. Furthermore, the law was recruited to uphold the superiority of such technical self-help measures. The recently adopted U.S. Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) 1998 prohibits the development and use of technologies designed to circumvent copyright management systems. The underlying assumption of this legislation is that in Cyberspace, the target of regulation should become the technologies that affect users' behavior rather than the behaviors themselves. This paper critically examines this regulatory approach and highlights its shortcomings.