Achieving a balance between defending human rights and protecting national security interests is essential for the preservation of democracy, Aharon Barak, Israel's most influential and controversial jurist, said to a crowd of 200 Sunday afternoon in the Sherman Function Hall.Barak, who resigned as the eighth president of Israel's Supreme Court in 2006 after serving on the court for 28 years, participated in and oversaw some of the most significant rulings in Israeli jurisprudence, significantly expanding the court's role and reach while also attracting criticism from both domestic and international sources.

"I see my role as a judge on the Supreme Court of a democracy as the protection of the constitution and of democracy," said Barak, who last visited to speak and receive an honorary degree at commencement in 2003. "We cannot take the continued existence of democracy for granted."

Barak, whose talk was entitled "Human Rights and the Battle Against Terror: The Israeli Case," spoke to an audience consisting mostly of non-students.

During his tenure, Barak injected the court into political processes that had previously been outside of judicial purview, restricting the freedom that the prime minister and the Knesset, Israel's legislative body, can exercise in governing. His court ruled, for example, that parts of the West Bank separation fence were illegal because the additional security it afforded was not outweighed by its detrimental effects on the lives of local Arabs.

"The balance and compromise are the prides of democracy," Barak said, speaking with a moderate Israeli accent. "Only a strong, safe and stable democracy may afford to protect human rights. And only a democracy based on the foundations of human rights can exist with security."

Thus, he argued, often quoting directly from the court's opinions, democracies must find a lawful balance between the two.

"Human rights cannot justify undermining national security in every case or in all circumstances. Human rights are not a stage for national destruction-because the constitution is not a suicide pact."

Barak was the driving force in the court's expansion of two legal doctrines, standing-who can bring a complaint to the court-and judiciability-what matters the court has authority over.

Instead of requiring individuals who appear before the court to have a personal stake in their complaint, the court now adopts an "open-door" policy.

"Everyone has standing," he said. "Everyone can come to the court."

That, coupled with Barak's view of judiciability that includes all political questions, has led to a much greater role of the court in deciding cases regarding a wide range of other topics, including most notably human rights.

Those rulings, he said, are based on a balance between preserving human rights and protecting national security interests, often using the legal concept of proportionality-which requires that the severity of a punishment be proportional to the act that triggered it-a principle which he said has not developed in American courts.

"This balance is based on the view that in democracy not all means are accepted. The ends do not justify the means," he said.

Israel has no formal constitution, but Barak has interpreted the 12 "Basic Laws" passed in 1992 to be constitutional in nature.

"My view is that Israel has now a constitution in the following sense: If a statute violates these" Basic Laws, it is illegal, he told Jake Sebrow '07 in the question-and-answer session that followed the talk. He said that Israel should in the future adopt a constitution, and cited South Africa's and Canada's as models.

Robbie Schwartz '08 asked Barak his opinion on the United States Supreme Court's rulings in matters related to terrorism, but in judicial tradition, Barak remained relatively tight-lipped.

"I'm not going to express my views on the American Supreme Court," Barak said. The most I'll say is that "it's going in the right direction . the question is the speed of the movement."

Barak now teaches law at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and Yale University. His talk was sponsored by the four-year-old Summer Institute for Israel Studies, which helps faculty from other schools develop their own curricula for courses on Israel.