Joel Sussman

Joel Sussman was born in 1910 in Kraków

Sussman was born in 1910 in Kraków, then part of Austria-Hungary. He studied law at universities in Frankfurt, Heidelberg and Berlin, and earned a doctorate in law in 1933. He later studied at Cambridge and received an LLB from the University of London in 1947.

He immigrated to the Land of Israel in 1934 and was licensed as a lawyer by the British Mandate authorities in 1937. He practiced law with Max Seligman and Alfred Witkon. He joined the Haganah in 1941 and served as a military prosecutor in the IDF during the War of Independence.

In 1949 he became a judge at the Tel Aviv District Court. He joined the Supreme Court in 1951 as an acting justice and was appointed a permanent justice in 1953. In 1965, in the Yardor case on the El-Ard list, he described Israel as a self-defending democracy.

He chaired the Central Elections Committee for the Fourth Knesset in 1959 and headed the inquiry into the 1969 fire at the Al-Aqsa Mosque. He succeeded Shimon Agranat as President of the Court in 1976. He also taught law at the Hebrew University and wrote books on bills, arbitration and civil procedure.

He retired in 1980 for health reasons and was succeeded by Moshe Landau. He died in 1982 and was buried in Kiryat Shaul Cemetery. In 1984 the Institute of Advanced Judicial Studies was established in his memory.