August 13, 1995
Aharon Barak, a Supreme Court justice since 1978, is appointed to serve as the court president, its chief justice.
Born in Lithuania in 1936, Barak survived the Holocaust after being smuggled out of the Kovno Ghetto in a potato sack. After the war, the Barak family made aliyah to Israel, where Barak completed his education, earning law degrees and a doctorate. He became a law professor at Hebrew University and law dean in 1974.
In 1975 he became Israel’s attorney general and served for three years. Toward the end of his time as attorney general, Prime Minister Menachem Begin asked Barak to serve as an adviser in the negotiations taking place with Egypt.
Appointed to the Supreme Court in September 1978, Barak served as a justice for 28 years. During his term as president of the court from 1995 to 2006, Barak was instrumental in expanding the court’s power, especially in protecting civil liberties and personal freedoms, often from government rulings or military actions. He removed many restrictions for individuals to petition the court. In a landmark decision in 1995, Barak stated that in the absence of a true Israeli constitution, the Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty and Basic Law: Freedom of Occupation stood above other Israeli laws.