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Abstract:The article examines the conceptual category of semi-liberal constitutionalism and offers some thoughts on the unique normative challenges that arise in the resolution of human rights conflicts in semi-liberal constitutional systems. Under the definition offered a semi-liberal constitutional system is a system that meets two conditions: first, it exhibits a simultaneous dual normative commitment to liberal rights and principles and to other values or interests that result in enduring and significant restrictions on some of these rights; second, this dual normative commitment is constitutive and is expressed in the basic elements of the system. Describing the problem of shaping and interpreting normative commitments in a semi-liberal constitutional regime, the article argues that an insufficient understanding of semi-liberal normativity may result in skewed reasoning by both courts and policymakers trying to resolve human rights conflicts in semi-liberal constitutional regimes, because the application of liberal rights reasoning in semi-liberal settings neglects the power differentials inherent in such systems and tends to overprotect the rights of some at the expense of the rights of others. Offering Israel as an example of a semi-liberal constitutional system and using one aspect of its semi-liberal nature – the structure of its religion–state relations and specifically of its religious personal laws – the article analyses three decisions of the Israeli Supreme Court, pointing to the special difficulties arising in such settings and offering critiques and corrections to the Court's rulings where applicable.

Controlling natality—the ratio of births to the general population—is one of the best means a state has to control its demographic composition. However, the fact that the state has certain interests with regard to the size and composition of its population does not necessarily give it the right to set and pursue natality policies, because such policies can potentially infringe on various human rights such as the rights of women and the rights of minorities. Using a feminist perspective I first argue that even if it is illegitimate for states to try to influence people's choice as to the number of their children in order to achieve demographic change, the state may, and should, enact natality policies aimed at promoting women's right to equality, regardless of whether their end result is to achieve a demographic change. Next I examine whether states are allowed to pursue natality policies aimed at decreasing natality rates in specific cultural groups, whose cultural precepts are oppressive toward women and dictate very high natality rates. Using the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in Israel as a test case, I present and reject three objections to the state's right to pursue such natality policies: the objection from free choice, the objection from free association, and the objection from culture. Rejecting these objections I conclude that not only is the state allowed, but it is indeed obligated, to pursue natality policies that aim to alleviate the oppression of women by decreasing inordinately high birth rates in illiberal communities. However, when choosing the measures for the implementation of such policies the state must take care to choose only measures that respect human rights.

The emergence of multicultural theory and of claims of recognition by cultural, ethnic, and national minorities has brought to the forefront previously neglected aspects of the right to equality. However, when judged on their own, claims for recognition stand the risk of failing to fully capture, and even distorting, the meaning of equality. I suggest that in order to avoid this risk, multicultural claims need to be contextualized. Employing Nancy Fraser's framework of two dimensions of justice—recognition and redistribution—and adding a third dimension—political participation, I suggest a framework for a contextualized assessment of multicultural claims that allows us to properly and fully assess their validity. I then go on to employ this framework on the claims of Israel's two most significant cultural minorities—the Palestinian Arabs and the Ultra Orthodox Jews. I show how the use of the suggested framework helps to expose the considerable differences between these two cultural minorities, and consequently the notable difference in the merits of their claims, a difference that would have otherwise gone undetected.