{{short description|Former President of the Supreme Court of Israel}} {{for|the chemist with the same name|Joel Sussman}} {{Infobox officeholder | honorific_prefix = | name = Yoel Zussman | honorific_suffix = | image = Zussman.png | image_size = | caption = Zussman in 1976 | office = Supreme Court of Israel judge | term_start = 1951 | term_end = 1980 | office2 = President of the Supreme Court of Israel | term_start2 = 1976 | term_end2 = 1980 | nominator = | appointer = | predecessor2 = Shimon Agranat | successor2 = Moshe Landau | birth_date = {{birth date|1910|10|24|df=y}} | birth_place = Kraków, Austria-Hungary | death_date = {{death date and age|1982|3|2|1910|10|24|df=y}} | native_name = יואל זוסמן | native_name_lang = he }} '''Yoel Zussman''' also spelled '''Yoel Sussman''' ({{langx|he|יואל זוסמן}}; 24 October 1910 – 2 March 1982) was an Israeli jurist and the fourth President of the Supreme Court of Israel, from 1976 to 1980.
==Biography== Sussman was born in 1910 in Kraków, Austria-Hungary (now in Poland). He received his LLB from the University of London and his PhD from Heidelberg University. He immigrated to the British Mandate of Palestine in 1934. He was certified as a lawyer and served as Chief Prosecutor of the Israel Defense Forces. In 1951 he was appointed to the Supreme Court and served as its Deputy President for several periods of time until 1953.
In 1965 during the Supreme Court hearings on election appeal case ''Ya'akov Yardor vs Central Election Committee for the Sixth Knesset'', popularly known as El-Ard Petition, Sussman coined definition of Israel as a "self-defending democracy", which was adopted by the Court.<ref name="Barzilai">{{cite book|last=Barzilai |first= Gad |title=Conflicts, and Political Order: A Jewish Democracy in the Middle East|publisher=SUNY Press|year=1996|isbn=0-7914-2943-1|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MByXVROQBn0C&pg=PA191 |page=191}}</ref> Supreme Court upheld ban on El-Ard ({{langx|en|The Land}}), a radical Arab electoral list, from participation in the Sixth Knesset elections and Sussman, taking the Supreme Court of West Germany ruling as a precedent, stated that there are supraconstitutional considerations hailing from natural law, that may be superior to any legislation:<ref name="Cohen">{{cite book|last=Cohen-Almagor |first=Raphael |others=Geoffrey Marshall |title=The Boundaries of Liberty and Tolerance: The Struggle Against Kahanism in Israel |publisher=University Press of Florida|year=1994|isbn= 0-8130-1258-9|url=https://archive.org/details/boundariesoflibe0000cohe |url-access=registration |page=[https://archive.org/details/boundariesoflibe0000cohe/page/184 184]}}</ref>
<blockquote>Just as an Individual is not bound to agree to being killed, neither is a state is obliged to consent to being annihilated and erased from the map... The German Constitutional Court...spoke of a "fighting democracy", which does not open its doors to acts of sabotage in the guise of legitimate parliamentary activity. For myself, as far as Israel is concerned, I am prepared to confine myself to "self-defending democracy," and tools for defending the existence of the state are at hand, even if we have not found them set forth in detail in the Elections Law<ref name="Barzilai"/></blockquote>
In 1976 he succeeded Shimon Agranat as President of the Supreme Court. He retired in 1980 and was succeeded by Moshe Landau. He was an author of several books on bill laws and arbitration laws.<ref name=matah>{{Cite web | title = Presidents of the Supreme Court | work = Matah | access-date = 2008-10-20 | url = http://lib.cet.ac.il/pages/item.asp?item=12460 |language=he}}</ref> He died in 1982.
==Awards and honours== * In 1975, Sussman was awarded the Israel Prize, in jurisprudence.<ref name=huji>{{Cite web | title = Israel Prize | work = Hebrew University of Jerusalem | access-date = 2008-10-20 | url = http://hunews.huji.ac.il/upload/4704leaders%26laureatesisraelprizeto2008new.doc}}{{dead link|date=March 2016}}</ref><ref name=prize>{{Cite web| title = Israel Prize Official Site - Recipients in 1975 (in Hebrew)| url = http://cms.education.gov.il/EducationCMS/Units/PrasIsrael/Tashlag/Tashmab_Tashlag_Rikuz.htm?DictionaryKey=Tashlah}}</ref>
* In 1984 the Institute of Advanced Judicial Studies was established in his memory.<ref>http://elyon1.court.gov.il/eng/Institute_of_Advanced_Judicial_Studies_for_2008.doc Institute of Advanced Judicial Studies</ref>
==See also== *List of Israel Prize recipients
==References== {{reflist|30em}}
{{Presidents of the Supreme Court of Israel}}
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Zussman, Yoel}} Category:1910 births Category:1982 deaths Category:Alumni of the University of London Category:Chief justices of the Supreme Court of Israel Category:20th-century Israeli judges Category:Polish emigrants to Mandatory Palestine Category:Israel Prize in law recipients Category:Burials at Kiryat Shaul Cemetery