Haim Cohn


Haim Herman Cohn was an Israeli jurist and politician.

Biography

Haim Cohn was born in Lübeck, Germany in 1911 to a religious family. He was chairman of a World Agudath Israel branch in Hamburg. At age 18 he came to the British Mandate of Palestine to study at the Mercaz HaRav yeshiva in Jerusalem, where he studied under rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook. He was also a Hazzan in Mea Shearim. He returned to Germany to complete his law studies at Frankfurt University. He emigrated to Palestine 1933 due to the rise of Nazism in Germany. He had earned with a PhD in law. In 1936 he was certified as a lawyer and the following year he opened an office in Jerusalem.
After the establishment of the State of Israel, he was appointed manager of the legislation department of the Ministry of Justice, and later became State Attorney. In 1949 he was made CEO of the Ministry of Justice and Attorney General of Israel a year later. As Attorney General, he decided to indict Malchiel Gruenwald, starting the Rudolf Kastner trial
and decided to ignore the law "and refrained from pressing charges on the conduct of homosexual relations between consenting adults."
In 1952 he was also Minister of Justice, without being an MK. In 1960 he was appointed to the Supreme Court of Israel, a position he held until his retirement in 1981.
In addition to his civil service, he was also a visiting lecturer in the Tel Aviv University and Hebrew University of Jerusalem law schools, a representative of Israel in the United Nations Human Rights Council and a member of the International Court of Justice in Hague. He was a member of the "T'hila" Movement for Israeli Jewish secularism.
He wrote five books, including The Trial and Death of Jesus in 1968, in which he argued that it was the Romans, not the Sanhedrin, who tried and executed Jesus.
He died in 2002. President of the Supreme Court Aharon Barak cited him as one of the founders of Israeli law.

Awards and honors