This research theme deals with the history and development of the legal professions; the court systems (especially alternative systems); legal education (establishment of law colleges), including the rising number of lawyers and overcrowding of the profession (“too many lawyers?”); the image of the court as it evolved and the question of whether there are enough judges (“too few judges?”); and the prevalence of litigation (“too much litigation?”). A sub-theme focuses in the context of the legal profession is the history of women in this profession, including the issue of women’s struggle and inclusion in the legal profession (lawyers, prosecutors, women judges, women in legal academia). These studies map the history of the legal professions in Mandate Palestine. They provide answers to fundamental questions about the history of the law and the judiciary, including judicial independence – an issue at the heart of the struggle of the first woman lawyer, which I uncovered in a study with Professor Halperin-Kaddari. 

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Eyal Katvan, “No more “Decorative Parsley”: The Struggle for Judicial Appointments for Women”, 32 Iyuney Mishpat (Tel-Aviv University Law Journal) (2010) 69 (in Hebrew).

Numerically, women today hold a majority of public legal positions, i.e., as state and district attorneys, in the Ministry of Justice, and in the Israeli judiciary. This article examines the process whereby women have been admitted and become integrated into these frameworks. As I will show, women (not necessarily lawyers) were already integrated into quasi-judicial roles during the period of Ottoman rule, and even more so during the period of the British Mandate. It is my central argument that this integration of women during the pre-State period laid the groundwork for their entry into prosecutorial and judicial roles following the establishment of the State, through a process that will be referred to as “desensitization.” This article demonstrates how such integration was made possible through the combined (although not necessarily coordinated) activity of the Union of Hebrew Women for Equal Rights, which strived for the integration of women into key positions, including in the legal field, and of women engaged in private activity with the intention of becoming integrated into this field. Notwithstanding the relatively successful story of the integration of women into the legal profession, this article will also examine the reasons for the limited appointment of women to prosecutorial and judicial roles up until the 1970s. In the course of the discussion, it will also be possible to learn a bit about the judicial or quasi-judicial instances operating in the country and of the parallel struggles conducted by women over their right to vote and be elected and their right to practice law during the Mandatory Period.

 

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Katvan Eyal, "The Entry and Integration of Women into Judicial Positions in Israel" in GENDER AND JUDGING (Ulrike Schultz, Gisela Shaw, Hart Publishing) (2013) 83.  

From a numerical point of view, women are today a majority in the judiciary in Israel. The beginning of the change and feminisation of the legal profession in Israel is usually dated as the 1970s. The question is when did women's entry into these positions begin, what enabled it and what prevented or halted their integration? I wish to show that the seeds for this success story were not sown in the 1970s, but in the time of the British mandate of Palestine, at the end of the First World War. Although at that time women's integration into the formal legal state systems was not possible, women did serve as judges in informal, non-state courts. I propose that this served as the foundation and training for their subsequent own, or their successors', legal activities after the foundation of the state. The process of integration was largely enabled by and due to: (1) the involvement of women's organisations, which recognised the potential of integrating women within legal frameworks – both during the Mandate and shortly after the foundation of the state; and (2) the private action and independent initiative of the first women lawyers, called to the Bar during the Mandate years. I demonstrate the existence of two ladders – private and collective – which women climbed in order to reach the top of the legal pyramid.

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Katvan Eyal, "Women in a Man's Toga: Women's Entrance into and Integration within the Legal Profession in Eretz-Israel and in Israel", Gender in Israel A (2011) 263 (in Hebrew).

In 1930 two female lawyers were admitted to the Bar in pre-state Israel. From that time until the establishment of the state of Israel (1948), only 42 women lawyers were admitted, compared with 1,300 men. Today, numerical equality has been achieved between male and female lawyers in Israel, as well as an alleged essential equality. Some explain this equality and collegiality, among other reasons, in women lawyers' distancing themselves from any "feminine" identification or feminist approaches, resulting in the absence of a "different-voice" in the legal arena.
At the center of this article is an examination of the entry and integration of the first female lawyers in the legal-profession. I will explore the different approaches they used in order to integrate and promote themselves within the profession, while struggling with their domestic and familial duties – e.g., forming and joining women's associations, keeping their maiden names, etc. This perspective will help demonstrate that women lawyers not only tried to act like their male colleagues, but interestingly, also employed feminist action in order to become more like men lawyers.
 

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Eyal Katvan, “Women in the Professions in Mandate Palestine”, 34 NASHIM JOURNAL  2019

This article recounts the fascinating dynamics of women entering the professions of law, dentistry and midwifery during the Mandate period in Palestine. After presenting the theoretical background relating to the concept of “profession” and the relationship between the statutory regulation of occupations and their professionalization, it focuses on the relationship between women and the professions as it was differentially impacted by legislation in the Mandate period. The story of women’s entrance into the professions thus provides a partial response to the question of how the British framed laws in the complex reality of Mandate Palestine, while endeavoring not to be perceived as discriminating against or privileging either Jews or Arabs. I shall present the process of women’s entrance into or exclusion from different occupations while examining the various narratives that accompanied the regulation of these occupations, in order to expose the common threads or differences between them. I conclude that the regulation of these professions may be understood not through a single uniform narrative, but in various patterns of integration: feminization and de-feminization, professionalization and de-professionalization, sensitization, politicization, and shifts in custom and tradition, which are slow and at times work to the benefit of professional women and at others to their detriment.

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Katvan, Eyal, Halperin-Kaddari, Ruth, “Rosa Ginossar”, in JEWISH WOMEN: A COMPREHENSIVE HISTORICAL ENCYCLOPEDIA (Jerusalem, Shalvi Publishing, 2006).

 

 

Eyal Katvan, Halperin-Kaddari, Ruth, “The Feminist Proposal is really Ridiculous”"Women’s Battle to Become Advocates in Pre-State Israel”, 25 Mechkarey Mishpat [Bar-Ilan Law Studies] (2009) 237 (in Hebrew).  

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Katvan, Eyal, Halperin-Kaddari, Ruth, “”When the Woman Becomes a Lawyer”: Rosa Ginzberg and Her Battle to Become a Lawyer in Pre-State Israel”, One Law for Men and Women: Women and Law during the British Mandate (ed. Eyal Katvan, Margalit Shilo, Ruth Halperin-Kaddari) (2010) 253 (in Hebrew).

This article brings the story of the first woman who practiced law in Palestine, Roza Ginzberg, focusing on her legal battle (vis-à-vis the British Mandate authorities) to become a lawyer, and placing it within the historical context of the Yishuv in Mandatory Palestine and Zionist circles overseas, as well as within the context of feminist battles in pre-state Israel at that time. Ginzberg's story has never been fully told, and she seems to have been forgotten and almost vanished from the history books of the Yishuv, of women in the Yishuv, and of the early days of the Israeli legal system. We hope to fill the gap, through the discussion of Roza Ginzberg's battle to become a lawyer in pre-state Israel. Ginzberg herself personified a rare combination of identities as a jurist, feminist, and Zionist. Notwithstanding these aspects, which give Ginzberg's story unique attributes within the Zionist context of the developing Yishuv in Israel, Ginzberg's battle should also be seen as part of women's worldwide battle for integration within the legal profession. Interestingly, when Ginzberg is remembered, her struggle is presented as a feminist one. We try to discover whether indeed she was a feminist, or perhaps this description is in a sense a retrospective imposition. Our investigation will draw from primary sources (including letters, personal communications etc.), contemporary press, as well as biographies, autobiographies, and personal interviews. This legal-historical portrayal will enable an analysis of the story and an examination of what signified Ginzberg's battle – including an exploration of the extent to which this was a Jewish, Zionist, or – in particular - feminist battle – or a combination of all factors.

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A. Eyal Katvan, “The “Overcrowding the Profession” Argument and the Professional Melting Pot”, INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THE LEGAL PROFESSION (2013).  

In 2012, fourteen law schools operated in Israel: four within universities and ten at private colleges. The number of law students at colleges and accredited attorneys who graduated from the colleges greatly exceeds the number of university law students and alumnae. There is consensus among the leadership of the Israel Bar that law colleges (the newcomers) are responsible for Israel's overpopulation of lawyers and for the legal profession's decline in prestige. Twenty years after the first law colleges were established, the time has come to inquire whether this argument of overcrowding of the profession presents a new ‘discovery’ or rather the recycling of a standard dynamic between professionals and legal education institutions. The present article examines this issue by evaluating several options: is the profession's ‘over-crowdedness’ argument an attempt to protect the public, an attempt to prevent competition and to elevate status or rather – as has not been previously suggested – is it an artificial argument aimed (perhaps also unconsciously) at creating a professional melting pot?

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B. Eyal Katvan, “Overcrowding the Profession” – An Artificial Argument?. 3(3) OÑATI SOCIO-LEGAL SERIES [online], (2013) 409 

It has been claimed that Israel has the highest per capital rate of lawyers in the world, resulting in belief that the Israel Bar is overpopulated. The first law colleges, which were established 20 years ago, are newcomers to the production of legal professions. The leadership of the Israel Bar have held the law colleges responsible for Israel’s overpopulation of lawyers and for the legal profession’s decline in prestige. This paper examines whether the perception of overcrowding of the profession is a new “discovery” or rather the recycling of a standard dynamic between professionals and legal education institutions. While this paper focuses specifically on Israel, concern about the overpopulation of the profession has become a central concern in many other jurisdictions.

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Eyal Katvan and Ruth Halperin-Kaddari, “Women's entry and integration into Israel's legal Academia – History, Story, Non-Story and the MEN(tor)”, in GENDER AND CAREERS IN THE LEGAL ACADEMY (ed. By Ulrike Schultz, forthcoming 2020).

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