Meir Shamgar

Meir Shamgar (; August 13, 1925 – October 18, 2019) was the president of the Israeli Supreme Court from 1983 to 1995.

Biography

Meir Shamgar (Sterenberg or Sternberg) was born in the Free City of Danzig (present-day Gdańsk, Poland) to Eliezer and Dina Sterenberg. He attended high school at the Balfour Gymnasium in Tel Aviv.

He joined the Palmach and served in Company D. He then joined the Irgun. He was arrested in 1944 for anti-British activities, and interned in Africa at a detention camp in Eritrea. While in detention in Eritrea he studied law by a correspondence course with the University of London. Fellow inmates in Eritrea included Yitzhak Shamir and Shmuel Tamir. He participated in an escape attempt.

In 1948, with the establishment of Israel, he was returned to Israel with the other detainees, where he enlisted in the Israel Defense Forces and participated in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.

Shamgar died on 18 October 2019 at the age of 94.

Legal career Following his studies, Shamgar rejoined the army as a military prosecutor. He was appointed Deputy Military Advocate General in 1956, and Military Advocate General in 1961. Following the Six-Day War, he designed the legal infrastructure of the Israeli military government in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. He attained the rank of Brigadier General. In 1975, he was appointed a justice of the Israeli Supreme Court. In 1982, he was appointed Deputy President of the Supreme Court, and in 1983, he became the chief justice of the Supreme Court. He retired in 1995.

In 1996 Shamgar chaired the Commission of Inquiry into the murder of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. After her death, he married Michal Rubinstein, a retired judge who served as Vice President of the Tel Aviv District Court.