Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is making good on his pledge to move ahead with his judicial reforms, as talks have stalled with the opposition — though he is beginning with the least controversial changes.
Netanyahu’s Cabinet decided Monday to move ahead with the first of several reforms, which would restrict the Supreme Court from using “reasonableness” as a standard for judging government actions — a catch-all phrase that even champions of an activist court have conceded gives judges far too much discretion over policy.
Former Supreme Court chief justice Aharon Barak, who amassed power for the judiciary in what he called Israel’s constitutional “revolution” in the 1990s, said Sunday that he would not object to rolling back the “reasonableness” doctrine — though, as the Times of Israel noted, he still opposes the other reforms.
The reform package, much of which parallels existing practice in the United States, has provoked opposition protests throughout the year. Netanyahu decided in April to delay the reforms and allow time for negotiations with opposition parties, under the auspices of Israel’s ceremonial president, Isaac Herzog. However, he warned that if opposition parties simply used the talks to stall, his governing coalition would pass the reforms anyway.
Instead of passing them as one package, with one up-or-down vote, Netanyahu appears to be starting with the most widely-accepted reforms and reshaping more contentious proposals for later consideration.
The issue has attracted criticism from the Biden administration, which is seen as supporting the Israeli opposition. President Joe Biden has refused to meet Netanyahu since the Israeli elections in November, ostensibly because of the reforms.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.