| dc.description.abstract | The case of the Israeli juridical field poses a puzzle. The political situation in Israel/Palestine deteriorated over the years from a temporary conquest, to an abiding belligerent occupation, and lately, to an apartheid regime. The Israeli juridical field elevated in the opposite direction, from a formalistic arena to a liberal, active, individual-oriented and human rights focused sphere. If the application of liberal law within a repressive political context is conflictual, then the Israeli case would lead to a head-on collision. Yet, reality suggests otherwise. On the surface, liberal law and apartheid regime are necessarily conflictual, as liberal legal philosophy and particularly the principle of the rule of law allegedly stand against repression. However, on the ground, liberal law and repressive political situations work together to complement and reinforce one another. The research interrogates this apparent enigma by using the Israeli legal education enterprise as a case study. It asks how Israeli legal education work to interpellate law students into a liberal juridical field that operates within a repressive political atmosphere. Based on four years of ethnography conducted within an Israeli law school, this inquiry provides a critical account of how law is being taught in Israel. The dissertation exposes several settler colonial pedagogies that are deployed in the law classroom. Silence and utterance allow to mute some areas and aspects of the law while putting emphasis on others. Legal Judaisation works to make sense of the contradictory definition of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state. De jure and de facto distinctions allow to teach the law itself while disregarding reality on the ground. Spatial ambiguity and the fragmentation of space overlook the Israeli apartheid regime through a vague description of the State’s territory. These settler colonial pedagogies not only bolster settler colonial logic among future members of the Israeli juridical field, but also bridge the relation between liberal law and apartheid regime. | en_US |
