Israel has been roiled by protests, boycotts, airport and road closures, wildcat strikes and refusals to perform army service, in scenes reminiscent of France, for half a year.
Israel has been roiled by protests, boycotts, airport and road closures, wildcat strikes and refusals to perform army service, in scenes reminiscent of France, for half a year.
The cause is judicial reform.
The government announced plans to revitalize Israel’s parliamentary democracy by restoring separation of powers and curbing judicial overreach.
Protesters demand the government shelve the reform, arguing Israel cannot be a democracy unless the country’s Supreme Court enjoys unchecked powers, unbounded by law.
This week saw the passage of the first of the planned reform bills, a so-called “reasonableness amendment” that tackles one of the most egregious forms of judicial self-aggrandizement.
The amendment addresses an issue of administrative law.
Israel, like every modern democratic state, has a vast unelected bureaucracy that governs many of the most important aspects of citizens’ lives.
Administrative law is the set of legal tools courts use to ensure bureaucrats exercise only the powers they have according to law.
Controversially, in 1980, Israel’s Supreme Court created a new administrative-law rule called the “reasonableness doctrine,” under which the court second-guesses the wisdom of bureaucrats’ otherwise-legal policies.
Even more controversially, in the 1990s the court expanded the reasonableness doctrine to grant itself power to second-guess the wisdom of the most senior elected officials including the prime minister and members of the Knesset (the parliament).
There is no parallel to either of these developments anywhere in the democratic world.
