This is also the case in the case of Yelena Genis (ibid., ibid.):
The first commandment is that a legislator can and may knead in a legislative act as he pleases, and that is as long as the legislative proceedings continue. However, when a law comes out of the bakery, the baker will no longer give signs to it, and the one who signs it will not testify to its dough. The decision regarding its validity, scope of application and interpretation of the law was given to the court – to the court and not to anyone else (emphasis in the original – M. H.).
See also: Criminal Appeals Authority 1127/93 State of Israel v. Klein, IsrSC 48(3) 485, 500-501; High Court of Justice 3648/97 Stamka v. Minister of the Interior, IsrSC 35(2) 728, 743-744; High Court of Justice 5290/97 Ezra v. Minister of Religious Affairs, IsrSC 51(5) 410, 419-420. Moreover, from the day of its birth, it immerses the law – up to its language – in the basic principles and doctrines that saturate the legal system, and in interpreting the law, the court – according to the constitution – gives full and complete expression to those basic principles and doctrines. Some say that the same basic principles and doctrines are part of the severity of the court itself (see: Criminal Appeal 4675/97 Rozov v. State of Israel, IsrSC 35(4) 337, 357), but in any case, the process of interpreting the law by the court contains quite a bit of the work, even though that work bears the label of a declaration on its face.
This is how it is in the interpretation of a law. This is not the case with the interpretation of a contract.
- Returning now to our matter, we will say that in our opinion it contains the rule of Apropim over its daughters – in any event, insofar as it is presented to the reader, to the lawyer and to the law student – an over-extraction of doctrines and basic principles from the theory of interpretation, control over the interpretation of the Liberty Law, and in the assimilation of these doctrines and basic principles from the instruments of legislative interpretation to the instruments of contract interpretation. However, the interpretation of a law is not the same as the interpretation of a contract, and the status of the court in the interpretation of a contract is not the same as that of the interpretation of a law. Hence the concern of distortion that may be caused in the interpretation of contracts. The advice is that we must be careful and careful not to mix sex with anything other than its own and to cause chaos and embarrassment.
and from the general to the individual
- Our case is the interpretation of a contract that has been concluded between the State and the Organization of Vegetable Growers (the growers), and the question that is asked is whether that contract instructs us as the State version – that it owes nothing to the growers – or whether it instructs us as the growers' version – that they are entitled to compensation under the contract. I read the documents that were collected in the court file. I read and delved, in particular, the opinion written by my friends, and after all this I came to the conclusion that it is appropriate for me to attach my opinion to the opinion of the Vice-President (ret.) Matza in the appeal proceeding. Justice Matza dealt at length with the interpretation of the contract (in paragraph 3 onwards of his opinion), and I will answer amen after the main points of his words. And since it is impossible to do nothing, I will also add a little of mine.
- For quite a few years, there was a system of quotas in various branches of agriculture in Israel. Advances in technology have led to a surplus of production over consumption, and in order to regulate market processes and not lead to the collapse of farmers and agriculture, the state instituted a system of quotas. The quota system, in these and other branches, has come before this court more than once, and the court has ruled its ruling, once one way or another. The opening of the market for unlimited imports of agricultural products from the Palestinian Authority ( PA or PA) has shuffled the ballot boxes of the quota system on the subject of agriculture. The free import of agricultural products from the PA has, in effect, dropped the ground from under the quota system – a system that had already been contemplated abolishing – and the state drew the one and only conclusion it could draw, namely: abolish the quota system. And so it is. This was the background to the signing of the compensation agreement that was entered into between the state and the growers, and this agreement – more precisely: clause 5 thereof – is what we have before us to interpret it.
- Clause 5 of the agreement is as follows:
- Additional compensation for the cancellation of quotas as a result of the exposure of quota crops to autonomy
The Ministry of Agriculture will submit to the Ministerial Committee for the Economy by December 15, 1994 a proposed resolution according to which:
- The Ministers of Agriculture, Industry, Industry, and Finance will refrain from signing quota orders in all large areas except potatoes.
- The government will act to change the Vegetable Council Law in such a way that it will not be possible to set production quotas for these vegetables in the future.
The compensation for the cancellation of the quotas will be NIS 1,700 per dunam, but the individual compensation for carrots and onions is subject to the construction of an agreed compensation table according to the seasons agreed upon by the Vegetable Council.