In November 1964 the then Minister of Justice stated in the Knesset:

All legal systems have long recognized the need to provide the plaintiff with provisional relief of various types so as to insure that, during the pendency of the legal proceedings, the defendant does not take actions that would frustrate the possibility of enforcing the plaintiff's judgment should one be obtained.

While recognizing the need to provide such relief, the law has, however, also been faced with an opposing set of values. That is, provisional relief is, by definition, relief provided before the plaintiff has proven the defendant's liability. In other words, the coercive power of the courts is sought to be brought to bear, whether in the form of sequestration of the defendant's property or by an order directed against him personally to restrain from acting as he otherwise would, before it is determined definitively that he is liable to the plaintiff. This is a drastic step indeed—a restraint of the defendant's property or liberty prior to a definitive adjudication of his liability.

According to the famous “Coase Theorem”, market forces, under given conditions, will automatically, without any external intervention, bring about an efficient allocation of resources. These conditions, necessary for the smooth operation of the “invisible hand” which leads to efficiency, are denoted as “absence of transaction costs”, as the presence of transaction costs may impede this desired process. The main legal implication outlined by Coase is that absent transaction cost, there is no need, and no place, from an efficiency point of view, for liability rules: resource allocation would be the same either with or without them. An act which is efficient will be carried out despite a liability rule which imposes the burden of compensation on the actor. On the other hand, an inefficient act will be barred by market forces without the help of liability rules.

“As long as war is regarded as wicked,
it will always have its fascination.”
Oscar Wilde

According to the textbooks, the unfettered right of a state to go to war was, until modern times, regarded as one of the essential trappings of statehood, an indispensable aspect of sovereignty. Such a broad assertion does however require qualification, as ever since the time of Saint Augustine, scholars have attempted to set limits to the extent of the state's discretion to go to war. The task has not been an easy one, and it may indeed aptly be remarked that “Warfare has been as difficult to justify satisfactorily in theory as it has been endemic in practice”.

Because of the diminutive size and relatively intense urbanization of the country, noise has always constituted one of the more serious environmental problems with which the Israeli legislature and courts must contend. Indeed, in a recent survey conducted by the Israeli Environmental Protection Service, (E.P.S.) 52.5% of Israelis questioned indicated that the major deficiency of their environment was the prevalence of noise, as opposed to only 3.7% who complained of unpleasant air or odours. Regulations have been enacted specifying the manner in which noise is to be measured and providing standards for the existence of nuisances. Recently, the court has been faced on several occasions with the question of whether violation of such regulations is necessary for an action seeking to establish a given noise as a nuisance. Although no definitive rule has been established, the Supreme Court, in confirming a lower court decision in Israel Electric Co. Ltd. v. Farsht, began what we hope will be a continuing process in determining a clear and optimal judicial policy regarding the measuring of noise and the use of these calculations in nuisance cases.