Episode Details

When does the law on the page stop being the law that applies to you? This episode unpacks the gap between statute and precedent across three common law systems. Using Israel's 1970 Tenants' Protection Law as a case study, we explore how decades of judicial interpretation can warp a statute beyond recognition — and why some countries cling to old language rather than lose settled precedent. We compare the UK's rare use of overruling, the US's willingness to wipe out decades of precedent (as with Chevron in 2025), and Israel's unique hybrid system where the Supreme Court built its own constitutional review power through precedent alone.