The Jerusalem Basic Law (1980) and the Jerusalem Embassy Act (1995): A Comparative Investigation of Israeli and US Legislation on the Status of Jerusalem

This essay, written from a religious studies perspective, compares two pieces of largely symbolic legislation, the Israeli 1980 Jerusalem Basic Law and the US 1995 Jerusalem Embassy Act, situating them in their respective historical contexts and raising questions about the dynamic of legislative acts that exceed the intention of both those who introduced these bills and the legislators who passed them into law. I argue that these laws indicate the power of broadly-shared public sentiments in modern politics and policy-making, a power that has the potential of overwhelming more pragmatic and cautious approaches to public law.