Conferences by Yishai Blank
Workshop Sciences Po Tel Aviv University
Papers by Yishai Blank
Social Science Research Network, Oct 10, 2007
Social Science Research Network, 2004
Social Science Research Network, 2011
תקציר בעברית: בהקדמה זו לתרגום לעברית של ספרו של אולריך בק אני סוקר ומעריך באופן ביקורתי את התיאו... more תקציר בעברית: בהקדמה זו לתרגום לעברית של ספרו של אולריך בק אני סוקר ומעריך באופן ביקורתי את התיאוריה הקוסמופוליטית של בק. English Abstract: Beck's wonderful book is among the first to deal directly with the concept of cosmopolitanism in Hebrew. Liberal thinkers and international law theoreticians started to advance this idea in order to describe the direction in which the post-Second World War world order should progress. After the fall of the Berlin wall, this line of thought became even stronger. In the view of these thinkers, the appearance of one, transnational human community is an almost unavoidable logical deduction and philosophical unfolding of liberal humanism, which views the rights-bearing individual as the core and purpose of all moral values. Communities, including national ones, should take second priority (if at all), and withdraw when faced with the moral imperative to advance the dignity and equal liberty of each and every human individual. International law should reflect this understanding and abolish the preferential and unequal treatment that is the byproduct—or even the goal—of the national order and of the political theory of nationalism. Cosmopolitan liberals disagree among themselves on the theoretical and concrete consequences of cosmopolitanism: what moral obligations stem from such global humanistic commitment? Should international legal norms be rigid or flexible, in order to leave some room for existing cultures to express their competing views about what humanity is and what should it become? And what political institutions should exist in order to advance and protect this ideal? Thus, some support a world federation which, while committed to cosmopolitanism, would still protect some degree of community difference and particularity, others try to advance a unitary world government. Cosmopolitanism has attracted critiques from left, right and center. Communitarians—liberal (Schmitt) and non-liberals (Kymlicka and Walzer) alike—have argued that it ignores the importance of communities and of collective identities in the life of individuals. Conservatives have decried cosmopolitanism as "parasitical" to urban lifestyle. Critics from the left also debunked it as the new imperialism, western ethnocentrism falsely masking itself as universal humanism. Beck rejects the regular meanings of cosmopolitanism, thus separating it from other concepts such as universalism, globalism, trans-nationalism, and internationalism. For him, and this is his unique contribution to the debate, cosmopolitanism is an ideal and a reality of universalism that maintains a particularistic dimension, of globality that includes nationalism, and of trans-nationalism which does not exclude a plurality of ethnicities and of cultures. Hence the two immense contributions that Beck makes are as follows. First, the sociological shift: the question one needs to ask is "what is cosmopolitanism?" rather than "what cosmopolitanism should be?" Second, is the substantive shift he makes: cosmopolitanism, he claims, is not the universal antithesis of the various particulars (nationalism, localism, culturalism, etc.), but is rather the synthesis of previous theories. It is the overcoming of the dialectics between universalism and particularism, between internationalism and nationalism, between globalization and localization In this Preface to the Hebrew edition of Beck’s writing on cosmopolitanism, I critically review and assess the immense contribution of Beck to the sociological study of globalization and of the emergence of cosmopolitan identity.
Social Science Research Network, Oct 1, 2017
Hague yearbook of international law, 2000
Social Science Research Network, 2004
Social Science Research Network, Oct 19, 2020
Social Science Research Network, Oct 1, 2017
Institutionalizing Rights and Religion
This article is an attempt to locate and defend “the secular” in present day Israeli legal doctri... more This article is an attempt to locate and defend “the secular” in present day Israeli legal doctrines, institutions and discourse of religious liberty. While some degree of state non-religiosity has been a fairly consensual political and legal value, secularism has never been recognized as more than a personal attribute of individuals or a coincidental trait of Israeli society as a whole. In addition to the partial guarantee of separation between the state and its official (Jewish) religion, secular persons have been protected by a set of individual rights and freedoms. Secular sentiments, secular communities and secular ways of living, however, have never been legally recognized or protected. In addition, the management of various aspects of religious freedom and of religious affairs has been, to a significant extent, delegated to local authorities. This legal structure has arguably served as sufficient barrier against religious oppression and coercion – or at least it did when seculars formed the majority of the population, or while they still enjoyed hegemonic political and legal status. However, as the balance of power in the legislature, administration and judiciary shifts from seculars to religious Jews, and as Orthodox Jewish religion gains prominence in the public sphere and state policies, this legal structure needs to be reevaluated and possibly reconsidered. Freedom of conscience and other individual rights may no longer adequately protect seculars and members of minority religions and non-Orthodox Jewish denominations. Seculars can be considered a national majority only if we include among them people who identify as “traditionalists” (masorti), and in certain localities seculars are already a minority. Unlike members of institutionalized religions, seculars in Israel do not form a coherent group with a more-or-less clear set of beliefs, practices and ways of life. Nevertheless, inasmuch as secularist communities signify the aspiration to create a plurality of experimental public spaces where liberal and counter-hegemonic values are protected (albeit in different ways), they themselves deserve to be protected against the growing enmeshing of state, dominant religions, and nationality. Thus, I argue that secularism in Israel should be understood as an effort by various non-religious minorities to confront and oppose the dominant and empowered state religion. As such, these communities should be given protection.
Stanford University, Stanford Law School, Jun 1, 2018
More than one hundred executive departments and agencies operate through systems of regional offi... more More than one hundred executive departments and agencies operate through systems of regional offices strategically located around the country. Currently, these regions are misguidedly viewed as mere enforcers and implementers of central policies. We propose two alternative visions of federal regions-regions as mediators and regions as coordinators. These two visions have deep roots in the rich but forgotten history of U.S. public administration. In the New Deal era, federal regions were understood as mediating entities between the central government's centralizing efforts and regional needs and conditions. With the expansion of federal programs and agencies in the 1950s and 1960s, federal regions were gradually reconceived as vehicles for coordination among the different branches of the administration as well as between the federal government and the states. Since the 1980s, however, federal regions have been seen as part of the oversized federal government and have thus been mistrusted, their role confined to that of mere enforcers.
Social Science Research Network, 2020
Mapping the Legal Boundaries of Belonging, 2014
Theoretical Inquiries in Law, 2007
The Article argues that, contrary to its state-centered conception, citizenship is determined, ma... more The Article argues that, contrary to its state-centered conception, citizenship is determined, managed and controlled in three distinct yet intertwined territorial spheres: the local, the national and the global. Without claiming that the national sphere is vanishing or becoming irrelevant for the determination of rights, duties, group belonging and participation in public life (all different aspects of citizenship), I argue that sub-national territorial units as well as supranational political organizations are increasingly impacting citizenship. All three spheres take part in deciding who shall be entitled to various rights (political, social and economic), what shall be the exact content of those rights, and who shall have the power to make such determinations. Yet each sphere bases its citizenship on a distinct logic and on a different set of assumptions and justifications: the local on residency; the national on lineage or place of birth; and the global on belonging to humanity. The Article demonstrates the ways in which citizenship is impacted by the three spheres and the different forms of legitimation that each sphere enjoys. The realization that our citizenship is a product of developments and activities in all three levels has theoretical, analytical and practical implications.
Israel Law Review, 2012
Cities in Israel are regulating religion and controlling religious liberty. They decide whether t... more Cities in Israel are regulating religion and controlling religious liberty. They decide whether to close down roads during the Sabbath, whether to limit the selling of pork meat within their jurisdiction, whether to prohibit sex stores from opening, and whether to allocate budgets and lands to religious activities. They do all that by using their regular local powers as well as special enablement laws which the Israeli parliament enacts from time to time. The immediacy of these issues, the fact that the traditional powers – business licensing, traffic and road control, spending, and more – of local authorities touch upon many of them, and the inability of central government to obtain a nationwide consensus over religious matters have caused the localisation of religious liberty in Israel. In addition, some legal rules induce and even force religious-based residential segregation, thus resulting in a relative religious homogeneity of local populations. Hence, cities are able to decid...
Urb. Law., 2006
... L. & Soc. Change 19 (2005). 13. See, eg, Tanya Katerí Hernandez, To Be Brown in Brazil: E... more ... L. & Soc. Change 19 (2005). 13. See, eg, Tanya Katerí Hernandez, To Be Brown in Brazil: Education and Seg-regation Latin American Style, 29 NYU Rev. L. & Soc. ... 21. See Shlomo Swirski & Etti Conor-Atias, A Social Situation Report 2003 (2003) (Hebrew) [hereinafter Report]. ...
Social Science Research Network, 2012
Theoretical Inquiries in Law, 2014
Legal Theory, 2010
... I am grateful in addition to Yishai Blank, Hanoch Dagan, Alon Harel, Shai Lavi, Daphna Lewins... more ... I am grateful in addition to Yishai Blank, Hanoch Dagan, Alon Harel, Shai Lavi, Daphna Lewinsohn-Zamir, Shahar Lifsitz, Daniel Markovits, Robert Post, David Schorr, Joshua Weisman, and two anonymous referees for helpful comments on earlier drafts. ...
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Conferences by Yishai Blank
Papers by Yishai Blank