Game of Chicken
Yesterday, on September 12th, the Israeli Supreme Court, sitting en banc, heard eight petitions challenging a hotly contested constitutional amendment. The Court has rarely sat en banc in the past, and this is the first time that it sits in a composition of fifteen justices, attesting to the importance that the Court attributes to this decision. The amendment modifies Basic Law: the Judiciary, which protects judicial independence, lays out the process of judicial selection for all the state courts and grants the Supreme Court the authority to supervise state action when the Court convenes in its capacity as a High Court of Justice. In this blog, I will explain each side’s arguments and the strategic considerations behind the Attorney General’s unprecedented move to push the Court to explicitly invalidate a constitutional amendment. I will show how both sides ultimately found themselves dragged into a game of chicken from which they could not back down.
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A Government of Laws, not of Men
The Israeli Supreme Court will hear this week (on September 12, 2023) petitions to invalidate an amendment to one of Israel’s Basic-Laws. The amendment, enacted in late July, denies the court the power to review the “reasonableness” of any governmental decision. This amendment is the first part of larger judicial overhaul plan, initiated by the Israeli government. Based on the court’s existing jurisprudence, I expect that the Supreme Court will declare the amendment unconstitutional, as it violates the core principle of the rule of law. In this post I offer a brief overview of the relevant background, before addressing the merits of the current case.
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The False Hope of Israel’s Protestors
The Israel Supreme has become a major mobilizing source for the weekly mass protests against the reform that have been taking place in the last six months in many Israeli towns. Tens of thousands of liberals and conservatives rally around this institution, if not around anything else, confident that the Court is capable of preventing the government from irreversibly breaching the democratic walls. Unfortunately, this confidence is both unfounded and likely to sabotage the anti-reform movement. Given its past rulings and when keeping in mind the conservative nature of the institution of the Israeli judiciary, it is safe to say that the Israel Supreme Court will not be able to salvage the country from a democratic backsliding driven by a determined executive.
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The Folly of the Israeli Government in Restricting Reasonableness
On Monday, July 24, the Israeli legislature passed a constitutional amendment that would constrain the courts’ ability to use the reasonableness doctrine. The reasonableness doctrine is a common law doctrine developed by the Israeli courts to review executive decisions. Without the reasonableness doctrine, Israel is more conflicted than ever, and vulnerable to the spread of the scourge of corruption. The government shot itself in the foot both domestically and internationally.
Continue reading >>An Unreasonable Amendment
Amidst massive protests taking place in Jerusalem and throughout the country, on July 24th the Knesset (Israeli parliament) passed Amendment Number 4 to Basic Law: The Judiciary, curtailing the power of Israel’s Supreme Court. The amendment determines that no court, including the Supreme Court seating as the High Court of Justice, may engage with and/or pass judgment on the reasonableness of any “decision” of the government, the prime minister, or any minister; nor may a court give an order on the said matter. The coalition government’s choice to go ahead with the legislation notwithstanding the internal and external pressures may now only deepen the multi-layered crisis the country has been in since January.
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Did Israel Lose its Sanity?
Israel is in the midst of an acute struggle over its constitutional identity. We are witnessing a government adamant about revolutionizing Israel’s constitution (“Basic Laws”), which may typically be amended by a simple majority of the legislature and is thus prey to the whims of an extreme government. The most recent move on the government’s agenda, passing a constitutional amendment that would severely restrict the reasonableness doctrine, would bring Israel closer to the brink of constitutional chaos. In this blog, I explain the theoretical arguments in favor and against the proposal and lay out the implications, should this proposal go through, given the government’s true, concerning motivations that are already evident on the grounds.
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Saifan and the Weaponization of Trade Secrets
The Knesset’s Constitution, Law and Justice Committee has been convening to discuss the regulation of spyware in response to the on-going fall-out over the Israeli police’s use of the spyware Pegasus (“Saifan” in its local iteration) to surveil Israeli citizens, including political activists. Public debate has chiefly focused on the question of legal authority surrounding police surveillance but has generally failed to recognize the underlying cooptative dynamics of governmental technology procurement. In this post, we detail the contested legal grounds on which the Israeli police and Ministry of Justice rely for spyware authorization as well as an analysis of the government procurement of surveillance technology, with particular emphasis on the weaponization of trade secrets in the service of strategic concealment of governmental operations. We argue that the combination of outdated laws with nontransparent operations make public accountability and oversight intensely difficult.
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In Jerusalem my Heart wanted to Scream out: “I am Polin, too” …
I went to Israel at a moment’s notice to share the lessons and cautionary tales of anti-constitutional capture in Poland and to explain the mechanics behind systemic and legalistic dismantling of the liberal foundations of the legal order. However, during my stay in Israel, I realized that as much the Israelis wanted to learn from me, they might as well teach Poles crucial lessons, not less these of civic engagement and mobilization.
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The Battle Over the Populist Constitutional Coup in Israel
On the night of March 26, 2023, the battle over the constitutional overhaul planned by Israel’s Netanyahu government reached an apex moment. Much uncertainty lies ahead. What is clear is that a combination of massive protests, pressure by significant groups in Israeli society such as the tech industry and elite military reservists, and American pressure forced Netanyahu to suspend the legislative process. Whether this development will lead to the burial or the reemergence of the constitutional coup is yet to be seen. The road ahead is complicated, as rejection of the coalition’s plan, while seemingly a victory for the democracy movement, may also serve to feed the populist argument about elites.
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Separating Substance from Procedure: How to Address the Israeli Constitutional Crisis
Many proposals to resolve the current Israeli constitutional crisis have been recently advanced. Yet, most of them are arguably unlikely to bring about a compromise. This is so not because their content cannot be accepted by the parties involved, but because they do not address the substantive concerns of the parties. Israel's constitutional crisis results from the fact that the parties to the conflict shape their proposals concerning the decision-making process in a way that is conducive to their short-term substantive interests. Any proposed solution must therefore separate substantive questions from procedural and institutional ones.
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The Proposed Constitutional Putsch in Israel
February and March 2023 have seen hundreds of thousands of demonstrators protesting against new proposed constitutional amendments designed to transform the constitutional foundations of the State of Israel. This is an exceptional phenomenon. Israel has seen mass demonstrations in the past, but it has never seen mass demonstrations on what may seem like issues which should concern, at best, lawyers or law professors. But looked at more attentively, this reaction is not surprising: beneath the legalistic debate on the constitutional amendments lurk deeper issues: should Israel be more western or more Jewish? What is the status of Jewishness in the Jewish State? What should the status of Palestinians in a Jewish State be? Is Israel primarily a western state, or is it a nationalist theocracy? A lot is, therefore, at stake for every Israeli citizen!
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Israels Staatsumbau
Israels neue rechtsreligiöse Regierung unter Benjamin arbeitet an einer Justizreform, die hunderttausende Demonstranten auf die Straße treibt und in der Kritik steht, den israelischen Rechtsstaat zu zerstören. Bei genauerer Betrachtung wird klar, dass es bei den Protesten nicht nur um die Reform selbst, sondern auch um grundlegende Fragen nach dem Charakter des jüdischen Staates und seiner Identität geht. Das israelische Rechtssystem steht schon immer stellvertretend für den Staat selbst. Die gespaltene israelische Gesellschaft streitet um das Verständnis von Demokratie, das Verhältnis von Religion und Staat und um die zukünftige Machtposition einzelner Gesellschaftsgruppen.
Continue reading >>In der Existenz bedroht
"In Ungarn geht es um das Überleben der Demokratie. In Israel geht es um das Überleben Israels."
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An Existential Threat
"In Hungary, it is about the survival of democracy. In Israel, it is about the survival of Israel."
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Israel’s New Citizenship Deprivation-Deportation Pipeline
Buried in the news on the Israeli Knesset’s judicial reform plans are two bills that substantially increase the government’s power to deprive citizenship and subsequently deport Palestinian citizens convicted of terrorism offences and their family members. One already passed into law last Wednesday, while the one targeting their family members is still making its way through committees. In this blog post we survey and evaluate the rationales used to justify these newly assumed powers and set out why their current design is so insidious.
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The Economic Fallout from Curtailing Judicial Independence
The attempt to emasculate Israel's Supreme Court has drawn widespread criticism and protest, both at home and abroad. An intriguing aspect of the situation has been the opposition expressed by business interests and economic experts, who are often and perhaps wrongly believed to attach an overwhelmingly high value to efficiency, commonly achieved in an institutional environment characterized by the absence of competing centers of political power. Perhaps the most visible manifestation of the concerns and fears emanating from this source has been the open letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signed by fifty-six prominent international economists, including eleven Nobel laureates, stating that judicial reform along the lines contemplated would set Israel on a course akin to that of Hungary and Poland.
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Statement by Canadian Law Professors and Jurists on the Proposed Legal Reforms in Israel
The undersigned are Canadian law professors and jurists. We write […]
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Israel: Cry, the Beloved Country
Israel, like many other democracies today, is a deeply polarized society. The operating principle of public discourse is typically: “Art thou for us or for our adversaries” (Joshua 5:13). It is thus telling that, in the recent eruption in response to Netanyahu’s new government plan to reform the judicial system, one sees groups whom one would have never expected on the anti-government side of the current protests.
Continue reading >>The Populist Constitutional Revolution in Israel
Israel’s Minister of Justice has published memorandums outlining the (first) major steps in the constitutional overhaul planned by Netanyahu’s new government – an overhaul at the epicenter of the rise of constitutional populism in Israel. The paradoxes of Israeli constitutional law make it vulnerable to such a populist attack, which occurs within a specific ethno-national context involving ongoing military occupation.
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A Possible Regime Change in Israel
Israel is rapidly undergoing a regime change/constitutional revolution - Hungary style - as reflected by various draft bills placed on the Knesset’s agenda during the past days, accompanied by a grand plan of reform presented by the Minister of Justice on January 4th. The new Israeli government only took office a few weeks ago, but these plans, evidently, were prepared carefully over several years. If successful, Israel may fully lose its democracy.
Continue reading >>Annexation is in the Details
The influx of news coming out of Israel these days renders it difficult to grasp the full scale and meaning of the constitutional and legal changes Israel is facing. In this blogpost, I wish to focus on one aspect of the upcoming changes, namely those that regard Israel’s control of the Occupied Territories. On December 28, 2022, Israel’s incoming Minister of Finance, Bezalel Smotrich, published an op-ed in the WSJ in which he argued, among other things, that the changes regarding the division of responsibilities concerning the Occupied Territories among Israeli bodies do not “entail changing the political or legal status of the area”. However, an examination of the changes included in the Coalition’s Basic Principles, published on December 12, 2022, and the coalitionary agreement between Netanyahu’s Likud Party and the Religious Zionist party, portrays a very different picture.
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On the Nexus between Separation of Powers and Judicial Power
This exercise in comparative constitutional law shows how, paradoxically, positioning a country on either side of the spectrum of separation of powers structures may lead to similar curtailment of the judiciary’s power, though courts in the two opposing regimes may use very different, and even opposing, judicial doctrines to reach similar non-interventionalist results. Moreover, though scholars typically study these common law judicial doctrines independently of one another, they are all a manifestation of how strong or weak the separation of powers in a given country is. Ultimately, the judicial branch may supplement, but not supplant, the democratically elected political branches, irrespective of the separation of powers in the country in question
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The High Stakes Israeli Debate over the Override
Following the 2022 elections to Israel’s legislature (Knesset), a hardcore right wing coalition is in the process of forming. Each of the potential partners in this coalition fantasizes about introducing an override clause into the Israeli constitutional system for different political motivations. However, the result would be the same. It would allow the Knesset to disproportionally infringe upon constitutional rights.
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The Tangible and Imminent Threat to Israel’s Judicial Independence
A fierce debate is raging these days about the democratic implications of the Israeli 2022 elections to the twenty-fifth Knesset (legislature). Yet, those who read the platform of the Religious Zionist Party—as expressed in the program "Law and Justice-Reform of the Judicial System," signed by the members of the Knesset, Bezalel Smotrich and Simcha Rothman—cannot ignore the real and imminent danger to Israel’s judicial independence. The top item on their agenda, published during their election campaign, is changing the judicial appointment process.
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Hanging by a Thread
On June 20, 2022, Israel’s PM Naftali Bennet announced that he has decided, together with Yair Lapid, Israel’s foreign minister and Alternate Prime Minister, to disperse the Knesset. Bennet explained that the dissolvement was necessary to avoid “constitutional chaos”. But what was this pending “chaos”? What Bennet was referring to in such dramatic terms is the prospect of the expiration of the Emergency Regulations (Judea and Samaria—Adjudication of Offenses and Legal Assistance), which were set to expire as a result of the Knesset failing to pass a law extending them. What are these regulations? And how can the expiration of regulations, let alone emergency regulations, amount to a constitutional crisis?
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