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Ambassador Richard Jones
Prepared Remarks
Fulbright Israel/USIEF 50th Anniversary Symposium
"International Influences on National Legal Systems"
January 29, 2005, 4:15 p.m.
Hebrew University, Jerusalem
United States Ambassador Richard Jones (center), Justice of the United States Supreme Court, Antonin Scalia (left), and President Aharon Barak, Israel Supreme Court, attend Fulbright Israel's 50th anniversary symposium entitled "International Influcences on National Legal Systems," held at Hebrew University, January 29, 2006 |
Her Excellency, Foreign Minister of the State of Israel and Minister of Justice Tzipi Livni, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in Israel President Aharon Barak, Justice of the United States Supreme Court Antonin Scalia, Chairman of the U.S. Israeli Educational Foundation Dan Vilenski, Vice Rector Strousma of Hebrew University Dean Licht of the Radzyner Law School of the Interdisciplinary Center, and distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon.
As Ambassador to the United States and Honorary Chairman of the Board of the United States-Israel Educational Foundation, the Fulbright Commission for Israel, I am delighted to have the opportunity to welcome you to this important symposium, "International Influences on National Legal Systems," organized to mark the 50th anniversary of the Fulbright academic exchange program in Israel. I would also like to thank the Hebrew University Faculty of Law and the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Center for participating in this celebration.
Justice of the United State Supreme Court, Antonin Scalia, provides his keynote address at the Fulbright Israel's 50th anniversary symposium entitled "international Influences on National Legal Systems," held at Hebrew University, January 29, 2006. the other keynote addressees, President Aharon Barak, Israel Supreme Court (left), Professor Ruth Gavison Law Faculty of Hebrew University, and moderator, Professor Claude Klein, Academic College of Law, Ramat Gan |
The emphasis in today's symposium on international influences is particularly appropriate to the character and the goals of the Fulbright program - for the program is based on an appreciation of the fact that people do not and cannot live in isolation, and that, being interdependent, they must work to understand each other better.
On January 5, at the U.S. University Presidents Summit on International Education, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice outlined principles to guide U.S. efforts to increase educational exchanges. Secretary Rice said that the United States must build on successful educational exchange programs such as the Fulbright scholarship program, which has brought more than 250,000 students from 185 countries to study in the United States since 1946.
We tend to speak of globalization as a fairly recent phenomenon. However, sixty years ago, in the wake of World War II, Senator J. William Fulbright understood that the peace and prosperity of all peoples were interrelated in a great global network.
He initiated the Fulbright program whose goal he defined as "to bring a little more knowledge, a little more reason, and a little more compassion into world affairs and thereby to increase the chance that nations will learn at last to live in peace and friendship."
Claims are made that international law must be strengthened and that international legal institutions must be given greater practical authority in order to advance interests shared by all peoples - preservation of peace, protection of human rights, protection of the environment, protection of the free and fair flow of international trade and investment.
President Aharon Barak, Israel Supreme Court, provides one of the keynote addresses at the Fulbright Israel's 50th anniversary symposium entitled "International Influences on National Legal Systems," held at Hebrew University, January 29, 2006. |
Claims are also made that it is desirable that the legal system of one nation should learn from, and be influenced by, the laws and judicial determinations of other legal systems.
There are others who state that the legitimacy of government derives from the will of the people, expressed freely in democratic elections; and that international influences on national legal systems must be limited so as to maintain national sovereignty - which they see as the guardian not only of national interest, but of democratic legitimacy as well.
Finding the proper balance between these conflicting outlooks will certainly be one of the great challenges facing the political and legal leadership of nations in the coming decades.
Given the leading legal and political figures gathered here to explore the issues involved, I am sure that the deliberations of this Fulbright 50th Anniversary Law Symposium will greatly contribute to advancing that debate.
I wish you all a fruitful and stimulating round of lectures and discussions.
Link to Ambassador Richard Jones Proposes Toasts to President Aharon Barak, Justice Antonin Scalia, Minister Tzipi Livni,
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