Re: Dead Sea Scrolls

Dear Prof. Birnhack - In your translation of the Dead Sea Scrolls case, you omitted a procedural matter that is of interest to me; namely, Section 8 - Applying Israeli Law, which explains why the court applied Israeli and not American law. I understand from your footnotes that the court relied on the presumption of identity of the laws; but does it explain why the appellants did not introduce evidence on U.S. law in the lower court?

If you could provide me with a translation of Section 8, I would very much appreciate it. [I am discussing this case in class next Wednesday, so if you have time to do it before then, it would be most helpful; but I certainly understand if you have more pressing matters.] Thank you for your assistance.

Sincerely,

Tyler T. Ochoa
Associate Professor
Whittier Law School
Costa Mesa, California

>>> Michael Birnhack <michaelb[_at_]research.haifa.ac.il> 09/20 6:56 AM >>>
Dear List Members, As was mentioned in the list a couple of weeks ago, the Israeli Supreme Court has recently ruled in favor of a scholar who compiled and deciphered one of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Court affirmed a lower court's injunction against (an American) book, it found to have infringed the copyright of the scholar. (Though, the book was still available a few days ago at amazon.com, for around $200).

For those interested, I posted an English translation of the case, at http://lawatch.haifa.ac.il/heb/month/dead_sea.htm

I hope you will find it interesting (even if you strongly disagree with the decision, like myself) and useful.

Michael Birnhack,
Faculty of Law
University of Haifa, Israel Received on Fri Oct 27 2000 - 00:54:04 GMT