Amnon Rubinstein

Rubinstein was born in Tel Aviv in 1931 to Aaron and Rachel Rubinstein, who had immigrated from Poland in the early 1920s.[5] His father worked as a building contractor, while his mother participated in public service activities.[5] He described the household as politically engaged and Revisionist, with relatives divided between supporters of the Haganah and the Irgun.[5] Arguments about the assassination of Haim Arlosoroff could become particularly fierce within the family.[5] Recalling the broader influence of this upbringing, Rubinstein said: “I absorbed that atmosphere, and from a young age wanted to repair the world and prevent injustice.”[4]

He attended Beit Hinuch Balfour in Tel Aviv and spent his final two years of high school in London.[3] He subsequently served as an artillery officer in the Israel Defense Forces, leaving military service with the rank of captain.[3] His university studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem encompassed law, economics, and international relations.[1] He qualified as a lawyer and completed a doctorate in law at the London School of Economics.[1]

His doctoral research examined administrative law, particularly the legality of administrative decisions and the authority of public bodies to make them.[6] Oxford published the dissertation as Jurisdiction and Illegality, a study of ambiguities in English public-law decisions that became an important early contribution to his academic career.[6] The research established administrative authority and the legal limits on its exercise as subjects of his scholarship before his later work on Israel’s constitutional system.[6]

Rubinstein began teaching law in 1961, working in the Hebrew University’s Tel Aviv branch and at Tel Aviv University.[3] He became the first dean of Tel Aviv University’s law school and introduced changes in its teaching and institutional life.[6] These included student participation in faculty affairs, modern and interdisciplinary subjects in the curriculum, and greater involvement by faculty members and students in public affairs.[6] His academic responsibilities thus extended beyond legal instruction to the development of the law school’s curriculum and its relationship with public life.[6]

His 1969 book, The Constitutional Law of the State of Israel, was the first comprehensive Israeli book on constitutional law.[6] It became a foundational resource for law faculties, practicing lawyers, judges, and students and was repeatedly cited in Supreme Court decisions.[3][1] The work addressed the constitutional structure of the state while promoting democracy, equality, and human rights.[1] In his early legal writing, Rubinstein argued that the Knesset possessed the authority to enact Basic Laws and a constitution and that courts could invalidate legislation inconsistent with a constitution.[4]

The constitutional treatise continued to develop through later editions.[7] Its sixth edition, coauthored with Barak Medina and published by Schocken in 2005, comprised two Hebrew-language volumes totaling 1,241 pages.[7] Its coverage included fundamental principles, government institutions, and citizenship.[7] The fifth edition, published in 1996, was also used in legal discussion of Israeli courts’ recognition of freedom of expression as a constitutional principle and of the circumstances in which expression could be restricted.[8]

Rubinstein’s research extended to the legal, social, and historical foundations of Israeli society.[6] He examined the character of the state, the legal status of the Law of Return, and the civil rights of Arab citizens of Israel.[6] Alongside his university work, he joined the editorial staff of Haaretz and became a political commentator, writing regularly on social, economic, and legal questions.[4][1] Academic research and journalism provided two settings for his engagement with government, rights, and the structure of Israeli public institutions before he entered electoral politics.[1]

The Yom Kippur War and what Rubinstein regarded as the absence of ministerial accountability afterward prompted his decision to enter politics.[1] He concluded that protest without political power would have little effect and that academic and journalistic activity alone would not allow him to bring about the governmental changes he sought.[4][1] In March 1974, he founded Shinui, a movement whose name means “Change.”[2][9] Its program advocated free enterprise, electoral reform, and a written constitution.[1][9]

Before the 1977 election, Shinui joined Yigael Yadin’s list to form the Democratic Movement for Change, commonly known as Dash.[9] The combined list won 15 Knesset seats, and Rubinstein entered the Ninth Knesset through that framework.[9][10] In 1978 he broke away, opposing the party’s decision to join Menachem Begin’s government, and established a separate Shinui parliamentary group.[10] He subsequently led Shinui in elections and, in 1992, participated in the formation of Meretz through its alliance with Mapam and the Civil Rights Movement.[10]

Rubinstein served continuously in the Knesset from 1977 to 2002, winning election seven consecutive times and accumulating 25 years of parliamentary service.[6][1] His committee responsibilities covered foreign affairs and defense, finance, economics, and law.[1] He chaired the Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, the Economics Committee, the State Control Committee, and the Ethics Committee.[1][2] He also served on the Judicial Selection Committee.[2] Earlier parliamentary assignments included membership of the Foreign Affairs and Security Committee in the Ninth Knesset and the Economics Committee in the Tenth Knesset, as well as chairmanship of the Shinui faction.[11]

His legislative activity included changes affecting higher education and the electoral system as well as constitutional rights.[10] In 1989 he was responsible for an amendment enabling private academic institutions to teach law, opening the way for colleges that were not financed from public funds.[10] During the Twelfth Knesset, he was also one of four members who initiated the law providing for the direct election of the prime minister.[10] These initiatives accompanied his broader interest in changing the operation of Israeli government and widening access to academic education.[1][10]

An unusual episode occurred in 1999, when Knesset Speaker Avraham Burg received a false report that Rubinstein had died and delivered a eulogy in the chamber.[3] Rubinstein was hospitalized at the time and later recalled being amused by hearing his own eulogy on live television.[3] He announced his departure from the Knesset in July 2002, and his resignation took effect at the end of October.[2]

Rubinstein became minister of communications in the national unity government formed in September 1984 and remained in the post until May 1987.[2][11] His work in the ministry included reforms concerning commercial and cable television, regional radio, telephone infrastructure, and the transformation of Bezeq into a commercial company.[4][2] He promoted competition in television and radio and the establishment of Channel 2 and cable broadcasting.[4] The communications portfolio therefore gave him responsibility for changes affecting both broadcasting and the organization of telephone services.[4][2]

He resigned in May 1987 after the inner Cabinet rejected the London Agreement between Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and King Hussein of Jordan, and amid Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir’s agreement to bring Shas back into the government.[10] When Yitzhak Rabin formed a government in July 1992, Rubinstein initially became minister of energy and infrastructure.[10] He also held the science and technology portfolio before moving to the education ministry.[4] His ministerial work thus encompassed communications, energy, science, and education during different stages of his parliamentary career.[4][2]

As education minister, a position he held through 1996, Rubinstein supported regional academic colleges as a means of widening access to higher education.[4] He described education as the peak of his ministerial work and regarded the creation of a network of academic colleges as his most important reform in the ministry.[6] He also reduced the number of required matriculation examinations.[4] The examination changes drew public praise, including an occasion when students lifted him onto their shoulders in front of television cameras.[4]

His educational initiatives extended beyond Israel’s own schools and colleges.[12] In December 1994, addressing Jewish communal leaders in North America, he proposed cooperation to train senior Jewish educators through expanded existing programs and shorter in-service courses.[12] He envisioned a world center in Israel capable of training approximately 1,500 senior educators, including heads of denominational education departments, professors of Jewish education, and principals of major Jewish schools and community centers.[12] Two Israeli programs had already graduated 200 educators who held leading positions in Jewish education internationally.[12] Rubinstein emphasized that he was presenting a framework and seeking partners to develop it, rather than announcing a completed plan or a new institution.[12]

He also addressed the relationship between education, harmful media, and civil liberties.[13] During a Knesset discussion about violent and “snuff” films, he said he would seek additional penal measures if necessary.[13] He argued that “Freedom of expression and civil liberties do not stretch to filmed murders and violence as entertainment,” while warning against treating two adolescents who had viewed such films as representatives of an entire generation.[13]

Rubinstein helped initiate and advance Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty and Basic Law: Freedom of Occupation, both enacted in 1992.[1][2] He regarded their passage as his greatest Knesset achievement and explained them as expressing the principle that human rights stand above ordinary legislation and coalition bargaining.[4][2] His work on these measures connected his earlier constitutional scholarship with the practical negotiation of legislation in parliament.[4][1]

The legislative strategy shifted from an attempt to enact a single Basic Law covering civil rights toward a gradual approach addressing central issues separately.[14] Rubinstein proposed dividing the broader human-rights measure into separate bills, and the two successful Basic Laws emerged from that process.[14] Their passage required extensive negotiations with representatives of religious parties.[14] The compromises included defining Israel’s values as both Jewish and democratic, removing an explicit reference to equality, and adding a reference to the Declaration of Independence.[14] Rubinstein explained that the declaration incorporated equality indirectly.[14]

The rights protected by the 1992 legislation included human dignity, life, liberty, property, privacy, and the ability to leave Israel, together with the right of Israeli nationals to enter Israel from abroad.[14] Governmental authorities were bound to respect the protected rights.[14] The limitation clause permitted infringements only by law, for a proper purpose, and to an extent no greater than required.[14] These provisions supplied a legal framework that combined guarantees of individual rights with specified conditions under which restrictions could be imposed.[14]

The Supreme Court’s 1995 Mizrahi decision treated the Basic Laws as superior to ordinary legislation and established judicial review of laws inconsistent with them.[14] Rubinstein described this constitutional change as the “constitutional revolution.”[14] He was one of the initiators and formulators of Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty alongside members of other parties, including Dan Meridor and Uriel Lynn.[15] Their understanding of the legislation included granting the Supreme Court power to review Knesset legislation.[15]

Two amendments enacted in 2000 advanced representation of Arab citizens in public institutions while Rubinstein chaired the Constitution, Law and Justice Committee.[16] The measures moved quickly through the committee and addressed the disproportionately low share of Arab employees in the civil service and the small number of Arab appointments to public bodies.[16] One amended the Government Companies Law to require due representation of the Arab population on government-company boards and, until that representation was achieved, the appointment of Arab directors to the extent possible.[16] The other amended the Civil Service (Appointments) Law to provide appropriate representation for Arabs, including Druze and Circassians.[16]

Rubinstein considered laws requiring due representation for minority groups relatively unusual internationally and believed that many Western democracies had no equivalent provisions.[16] His support for these measures formed part of a wider position favoring full equality for Israel’s Arab minority alongside the preservation of Israel’s Jewish national identity.[1] His scholarship addressed the relationship between these commitments rather than treating democratic principles and Jewish nationhood as separate subjects.[1]

In discussing the 2000 amendment to the State Education Law, Rubinstein explained that education had become “equally aimed at members of all cultures in the country.”[17] He emphasized that schools were, for the first time, legally required to teach Arab history and the identity and culture of the Israeli Arab community.[17] He attached particular importance to the law’s use of shared wording for Jews and Arabs.[17] Later, as chair of the minorities subcommittee of the National Task Force for the Advancement of Education in Israel, known as the Dovrat Commission, he proposed that equality and cooperation in Arab-sector public education could help close gaps between Arab and Jewish populations.[18]

Together with Alexander Yakobson, Rubinstein wrote Israel and the Family of Nations: The Jewish Nation-State and Human Rights, which analyzed the conceptual and legal foundations for Israel to be both Jewish and democratic.[1] Its subjects reflected his sustained work on national identity, citizenship, and human rights, and the book was among the contributions recognized when he received the Israel Prize.[6]

His writing also considered Zionism in terms of the lives of individuals and the condition of the Jewish people collectively.[19] In the essay “From Herzl to Rabin, The Changing Image of Zionism,” he wrote: “Normality means the redemption of the individual as well as the normalization of the people.”[19] He further argued that “healthy nations, healthy people are not obsessed with issues of existence and survival.”[19] These formulations presented individual redemption and collective normalization as linked dimensions of his understanding of Zionism.[19]

After leaving the Knesset, Rubinstein returned to academia as dean of the Radzyner School of Law at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya and also served as the institution’s provost.[1] He continued writing legal and political works while developing a parallel career in fiction.[3] His novels included The Blanket in 2005 and Highway Number Five in 2006; his last novel appeared in 2022.[3] His broader bibliography included From Herzl to Gush Emunim and Back and To Be a Free People, and his newspaper writing amounted to more than 2,000 articles in Israel and abroad.[3]

He headed a public commission examining parliamentary oversight of the security establishment, established following a dispute involving the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee and the security establishment.[20] Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin and committee chair Yuval Steinitz initiated the commission.[20] Its recommendations included limiting participation in committee discussions to official members and allowing parties to replace their representatives only once a year.[20] The commission also cautioned against granting parliamentary committees direct command authority over the defense establishment.[20]

The commission linked effective oversight with openness while recognizing the need to protect state secrets whose disclosure could directly harm security.[20] Its stated principle was that, subject to that protection, “the more open the discussion, the better for both Israeli democracy and its security.”[20] Its recommendations thus addressed both the organization of parliamentary committees and the relationship between public discussion, democratic accountability, and security requirements.[20]

Rubinstein’s international public activity included service as a board member and vice president of Liberal International and membership of Israel’s delegation to the Council of Europe.[18] He also represented Israel on the Venice Commission’s legal committee.[18] His books appeared in English, German, French, and Russian, while his legal and other articles appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and legal journals in Europe and America.[18]

In October 2022, he founded the Rubinstein Center for Constitutional Challenges at Reichman University to address contemporary constitutional issues.[2] He remained engaged in debate over Israel’s constitutional system during his final years.[2] Rubinstein died on January 18, 2024, aged 92.[3]

Rubinstein received the Israel Prize for legal research in 2006, with the judges calling him the “father of constitutional law in Israel.”[3][1] The award recognized both his scholarship and his public contributions to democracy, equality, and human rights.[3][1] His 1969 constitutional treatise was singled out as his central contribution to Israeli public law, while Israel and the Family of Nations was also recognized as an important part of his work.[6] His earlier administrative-law study, Jurisdiction and Illegality, was honored as a pioneering examination of English public-law decisions and a foundational work in its field.[6]

His other honors included the Israel Movement for Quality Government’s Knight of Quality Government award in 2003 and the Heshin Prize for Academic Excellence in Law in 2010.[3] His constitutional writing remained a resource for legal teaching, professional practice, and judicial decisions through successive editions and collaboration with Barak Medina.[7][1] The use of the work in discussions of freedom of expression also reflected its reach beyond the organization of government to the protection and limitation of individual liberties.[8]

His public record combined several distinct forms of institutional change: the establishment of Shinui, the advancement of human-rights Basic Laws, communications reforms, and the expansion of academic colleges.[4][2] The Israel Prize recognition emphasized the close relationship between his academic expertise and public advocacy.[1] His work on Arab citizens’ rights, Jewish national identity, and democratic government likewise extended across scholarship, legislation, and educational policy.[1][16] Alongside these contributions, his journalism and fiction formed a substantial body of writing beyond his legal publications.[3]

The interpretation and scope of judicial review following the 1992 Basic Laws became significant subjects of Israeli legal and political debate.[14] Rubinstein’s understanding of the laws as a constitutional transformation, including their implications for the Supreme Court’s authority, belonged to that wider dispute.[14]

His positions on equality, Jewish national identity, and religiously framed political arguments also drew opposition.[21] Eric H. Yoffie credited him with documenting and publicizing statements that Yoffie characterized as racist distortions of Jewish law, and reported that Gush Emunim supporters responded by vilifying Rubinstein as “a Jew-hater and an Arab-lover.”[21] In a separate political commentary on the Qaadan land-allocation case, Rubinstein was quoted warning about “flagrant political irredentism” and criticizing challenges to Israel’s identity as the state of the Jewish people.[22] These reported assessments reflected disputes over the relationship between minority equality, collective rights, and Jewish nationhood.[22]