Halevy was born
Ernst Levi in
Weissenfels,
Germany{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FHYyPSOyUCwC&q=halevy&pg=PA382 Halevy was a Magistrate Judge in
Jerusalem during the Mandate period, from 1938 until Israel's
declaration of independence in 1948. He served as a District Judge and the President of the Jerusalem District Court until 1963 when he was appointed to the
Supreme Court of Israel. Halevy was the sole judge in what became known as the "
Kastner trial," a libel lawsuit against
Malchiel Gruenwald, a hotelier, who accused
Rudolf Kastner of having been a Nazi collaborator. Halevy allowed the scope of the trial to be expanded and ruled that Kastner had indeed, in his words, "sold his soul to the devil." Kastner was later assassinated and Halevy's ruling was mostly overturned by the Supreme Court. The manner in which he conducted the trial was criticized. Halevy was the sole judge at the trial of the
Kafr Qasim massacre's perpetrators, and in his decision famously wrote, "The distinguishing mark of a manifestly illegal order is that above such an order should fly, like a black flag, a warning saying: 'Prohibited!'" He was later a judge at the
trial of Adolf Eichmann, along with
Yitzhak Raveh and
Moshe Landau. In 1969 Halevy resigned from the court in order to enter politics. He was elected to the
Seventh Knesset for the
Gahal (Herut-Liberal Bloc) list, and again to the
Eighth Knesset in 1973 after Gahal had merged into
Likud. He later left the party to sit as an independent MK. In the
1977 elections, he was returned to the Knesset on
Dash's list, but the party split up after a year, and Halevy joined the
Democratic Movement, before leaving to again sit as an independent. During the Ninth Knesset he also served as deputy speaker. Today a street in his birthplace Weissenfels is named after him. He was married for many years to Luba. They had a son and daughter. After Luba's death he married Michal Halevy. ==See also==