About LaWatch

Over the last few decades, the State of Israel has been going through a process that can be called legalization. The courts and the concept of the law are turning into important social and political institutions in the country. Above all, the Supreme Court stands out as being one of the dominant authorities within the Israeli political system. It has taken central position in public decision making procedures in society, while displaying an extent of unprecedented involvement in other government activities. As a result, the Supreme Court has become a focal point of curiosity to the public at large and a favorite of the media.

Our knowledge of the Supreme Court is mainly based on the important judgments given by it, but these are in a minority in comparison to rest of the Supreme Court judgments given throughout the year. The private and public sphere of influence can only be learned from the daily work through the judges. Recently, the Supreme Court itself opened an internet site where all judgments are published online. The site contains all judgments, not only those that appeared in the newspapers or aroused interest in the legal community, the body responsible for the official publication of judgments.

The LaWatch Website is a joint project of the University of Haifa's Faculty of Law and the Research Center for the Study of Crime, Law and Society at the university. It is intended to provide a current statistical data of the Israeli Supreme Court activities based on the Court's database of judgments. The LaWatch objective is to spark the interest of the public at large in important judgments given by the court. We hope that the facts found in this site will assist in understanding the work of the Supreme Court and its judges and be a suitable basis for discussions on possible reforms.