7 Winter 2026 intersection of security, politics, constitutional identity, and national trauma. The office must defend the state while constraining it; advise a government seeking to navigate the country in what sometimes seems like perpetual crisis; and protect rights in a society where every right is contested and every decision has existential implications. It is a role without real precedent anywhere in the democratic world. It requires legal skill, moral courage, and the loneliness that comes from telling — and from having to tell — the most embattled democratic government on earth: “This far — and no further.” The Psalmist reminds us: Tzedek umishpat mechon kis’o – justice and law are the foundation of God’s throne. It is a phrase I chose when appointed to the House of Lords, as the motto on my personal coat of arms — and in the original Hebrew, I should make clear. And if justice and law are the foundation of the throne of the Jewish God, they are also, I suggest, the foundation of the constitution of the Jewish State. But — and we know that for us Jews there is always a “but” — we instinctively distrust any proposition to which there is no exception — but, at the same time, and even at the highest level, we must acknowledge the limits of law. Steven E. Zipperstein —an attorney and a Senior Fellow at UCLA—has recently published an important study: Zionism, Palestinian Nationalism and the Law: 1939– 1948. It is a meticulous, deeply sourced examination of how British legal structures, Mandate institutions, and competing Jewish and Palestinian national movements collided in the decade before Israel’s independence. Zipperstein’s central insight is sobering: the law could manage conflict, but it could not resolve it. Legal mechanisms were deployed with intelligence — sometimes with idealism — often with brilliant novelty — but the underlying national narratives were irreconcilable within any legal formula. His conclusion is that law cannot deliver political reconciliation when the parties deny each other’s legitimacy. The law can restrain; it can channel; it can articulate principles — but it cannot manufacture trust, and it cannot conjure peace out of incompatible visions of nationhood. Which brings me to international tribunals and international courts. As Jewish lawyers, we understand their profound importance. A world without international law is not a world in which Jews have ever been safe. The absence of effective international institutions in the 1930s and 1940s remains one of history’s bitterest warnings. But we also understand their deficiencies. They are only as strong as the consent that sustains them. When they over-reach, they lose legitimacy; when they underreach, they lose relevance. They can deliver judgments — but not always justice. In the post-October 7 world, these deficiencies are especially stark. For us, October 7 is a wound that has not healed. For the Jewish People, it was the most brutal day since the Holocaust. But around much of the world, October 7 is not a date that resonates. We have discovered, painfully, month by month over the past few years, that even the starkest atrocity can dissolve in the acid of political storytelling. And that international legal institutions are not immune to that corrosion. If we cannot rely on shared moral premises, then law — by itself — cannot save us. And yet, precisely because of these challenges, our work matters now, more than ever. We are the heirs of Abraham — questioning, arguing, insisting on justice — even when the world is deaf to it. Especially when the world is deaf to it. We are the heirs of the jurists who rebuilt Europe after the war. We are the heirs of those heroes here in Warsaw, who lived and died — no, who lived and were murdered — not a mile from here. We are the physical and spiritual and legal heirs of those kedoshim — who believed that humanity endures even when the law collapses. Our task is not to pretend that law can do everything. We cannot look to law to solve all our problems nor heal all our divisions. We need to recognize that there is a boundary where law ends, and politics begins. Our task is to ensure that law does what it can do — with integrity, with courage, and also with humility. “Tzedek, tzedek tirdof” — Justice, justice shall you pursue. Not admire. Not discuss. Not file in triplicate. Pursue. And pursue, because perhaps you will never — perhaps you can never — fully and completely and enduringly attain complete justice. Here in Warsaw — a place where justice was denied, and where the consequences stand as a permanent warning — we reaffirm that pursuit. We will defend the law. We will defend the truth. We will defend human dignity — for our own people, and thereby for all people. Because if the Judge of all the earth must do justice, then surely — surely — so must we.n David Wolfson (Lord Wolfson of Tredegar, KC) served as Minister of Justice in the House of Lords for the previous UK Conservative Government, and is now the Shadow Attorney General. David is one of the most sought-after commercial Silks at the English Bar, and is a trustee or patron of several Jewish organizations and charities in the UK. He also has strong family connections with Israel, where he maintains a home.
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