Retired
Israeli Judge Spreads Controversy in Australia
by Sol
Havivi
Tel
Aviv, ISRAEL – 18
March 2013. Public outcry in Israel led
to Philip Marcus’ early retirement last year.
Marcus’ controversial views came to light when he denied custody to a
gay father because he claimed his court had no way of knowing whether this
homosexual father was a pedophile. That
father had Marcus’ ruling overturned on appeal.
The backlash over this case forced then-Judge Marcus into early
retirement.
Philip Marcus’ troubles did not end
there. A group of Israeli parents
brought his rulings to a committee hearing at the United Nations and
successfully proved the family court system which Marcus helped establish in
Israel violates international human rights laws. A lawsuit pending in Manhattan, NY cites
Philip Marcus’ rulings to show systematic torture of divorced fathers in Israel.
The 6th World Congress on Family
Law and Children’s Rights is changing Philip Marcus’ luck in Sydney, Australia
today. At 13:30 local time today he will
present his paper on “Children’s Rights”.
This presentation also gives him the opportunity to share views from his
thesis published in 2007; which argues taking away rights from citizens in
court and replacing those rights with obligations. The World Congress on Family Law and
Children’s Rights gathers government officials, family law practitioners,
jurists and other decision-makers from all over the world to influence changes
in family laws internationally.
“This is a very scary development,” says
Yehudah Mizrachi, a spokesman of the Coalition for Children and the Family in
Israel. “Inviting Philip Marcus from
Israel to help formulate laws governing children’s rights is like inviting
Bashar al-Assad from Syria to help formulate international human rights
laws. It makes no sense.”
Documents from the Coalition for Children
and the Family assert that, as judge, Philip Marcus was “drunk on his own
power”. These documents include data
showing the family court system he created performed poorly on children’s
rights compared to other countries in the OECD.
One specific example was a Knesset hearing in which former Knesset
Member Otniel Schneller pointed out that the supervised visitation rate in
Israel is six times higher than anywhere else in the world. “Are we really such a violent society that we
endanger our children six times more than anywhere else in the developed
world?” KM Schneller asks.
The lawsuit pending in New York also
references this hearing and points out that this system drains nearly $10
billion from the state budget plus over $1 billion in donations. The complaint compares this budget to New
York’s whose population is three times larger than Israel; yet operates
successfully on 16% of this budget. One
of the Plaintiffs in this lawsuit recounts his experience in the court
documents, “[Philip Marcus] told me in open court he did not care if I lived or
died.” The organizing committee of the
World Congress on Family Law and Children’s Rights has not responded to
requests for an interview explaining their reason for selecting Philip Marcus to
present his paper on children’s rights.