Codification of Private International Law in Israel?

Abstract

In the field of Private International Law, as well as in other branches of the law, Israeli legislation reflects the inheritance of the past. The situation is particularly complex in relation to matters of personal status, where the principle of the personality of the law, characterising the legal set-up of the former Ottoman Empire, still prevails, although modified in various ways by enactments of the Mandatory period and the legislature of Israel. Yet the bulk of conflict rules are drawn from the common law as applied in England, a subsidiary source of legal rules under art. 46 of the Palestine Order-in-Council, 1922–47.The details of the P.I.L. system actually in force in the State of Israel will not be dealt with in this paper. Our discussion will be limited to the main trends.The rules concerning personal status in Israel have their basis in Ottoman law according to which the national law of foreigners was applied to them by the consular courts of their own States. This, the well-known system of the Capitulations, was maintained until the Treaty of Montreux of 8 May 1937.When the British Mandate was set up in Palestine, the pattern obtaining in other territories under British administration was followed: the existing legal framework was retained and merely adapted to the new situation. The relevant Mandatory legislation consisted of the Palestine Order-in-Council 1922 and the Succession Ordinance, 1925. Under these enactments matters of personal status affecting foreigners (other than Moslem foreigners belonging to States who required them to submit in such matters, to the exclusive jurisdiction of the Moslem Religious Courts) were to be tried by the civil courts (the District Courts) according to their national law; if, however, the national law referred the matter to the law of their domicile, such latter law was to be applied.