Haim Cohn

Haim Herman Cohn was an Israeli jurist and supreme court justice. Born in Lübeck, Germany, to a religious family, he began his legal studies at the age of eighteen but traveled to British Mandate Palestine shortly thereafter to study at the Mercaz Harav yeshiva in Jerusalem. Two years later, he returned to Germany to complete a doctorate in law at the University of Frankfurt, with a dissertation on legal methodology in the Talmud. In 1933, in response to the rise of Nazism, he emigrated to Palestine.

Cohn played a significant role in the development of Israeli law in the state’s early years and had a lifelong dedication to human rights. He served as the attorney general of Israel from 1950 to 1960, resigning his post to avoid participating in the prosecution and inevitable sentencing to death of Adolf Eichmann, due to his opposition to the death penalty. From 1960 to 1981, he sat on Israel’s Supreme Court. Cohn frequently issued dissenting opinions on matters relating to human rights, citizenship, democracy, and the relationship between religion and the state. For several years, he represented Israel in the United Nations Human Rights Council. He also served as professor at Hebrew University and Tel Aviv University and authored several books, including The Trial and Death of Jesus (1968), written in response to requests from Christian clergy that Israel overturn the Sanhedrin’s conviction of Jesus, in which he argued that the Romans and not the Sanhedrin were responsible for Jesus’ execution. Cohn was awarded the Israel Prize in jurisprudence in 1980, and after retiring from the Supreme Court in 1981, he became president of the Association of Civil Rights in Israel, where he served until 1988. 

Cohn moved away from religion, finding it impossible to believe in God in the face of the Holocaust, and clashed with rabbinic authorities in Israel, believing that they overstepped their proper role. Yet he remained engaged with Jewish tradition in his jurisprudence and writings, as in his 1984 book Human Rights in Jewish Law, which found a grounding for principles of human rights in the Jewish legal tradition.