However, these laws have been interpreted by the courts as securing the principle of gender equality as a basic principle of the legal system. While in the private sphere, all the religious systems impose patriarchal norms on family life, in areas of law not directly related to religious values and norms a strong concept of gender equality has been developed. A legal system is a mirror of the society in which it functions, reflecting different aspects of social reality at different levels of its infrastructure.
Constitutional principles reflect the fundamental societal norms in Israel, formulated by the Lit. Knesset as constitutive assembly and interpreted by the High Court of Justice. In the ordinary legislative process, there is a testing of practical priorities, of the preparedness of a society not only to declare values but also to implement them.
Case law, whether constitutional or not, represents an amalgam of the priorities of petitioners, those members of the society who invest their energies in applying to court, and the perceptions of judges based on their professional training and their individual perspectives.
The courts provide a forum for a dialectic of opposing viewsβthe plaintiff articulates his or her case, the defendant responds, and the judges determine the norm as they perceive it, each in his or her own way. This litigatory process reveals both the parameters of social activism and the judicial perception of the normative consensus.
However, the principles of the Declaration of Independence were not subsequently ensconced in a constitution. Neither the Declaration of Independence nor the Law bestowed constitutional authority on the courts to cancel subsequent primary legislation, enacted by the Knesset, as unconstitutional.
