Israel Supreme Court Gives Netanyahu Government Serious Setback

Israel Supreme Court Jerusalem (Wikipedia)

The government of Benjamin Netanyahu had a serious domestic political setback as the country’s Supreme Court overturned a law it had passed intended to limit the court’s powers. A divided court voted to strike down the controversial “Reasonableness” Law.

In doing so the Supreme Court of Israel not only struck down a central part of the Netanyahu government’s platform, it also showed that it was not going to shy away from issuing such rulings while the war in Gaza is still going on.

Reasonableness has to do with whether or not the government considered just about everything and anything related to an issue before making its decision. So, it doesn’t just apply to new laws, but to government actions. This means that the Supreme Court reserves for itself the authority to overrule a decision made by Israel’s government simply because it did not cover every possibility in its deliberations.

Supporters of such standards say that they are necessary in a country where the government is also the majority in a parliament where there is no upper body, such as a senate, to review laws. There is also no head of state with the ability to review government actions. In Israel the President has a largely ceremonial role.

Israel also has no written constitution that specifies the exact nature of the courts’ powers in relation to the government, as the American constitution does. The courts in Israel exist only because laws were passed by the Knesset creating them. As such, proponents of the Reasonableness law argue that the Knesset therefore should be empowered to determine what the courts’ powers are.

Opponents of the law say that it “undermines basic democratic principles including the separation of powers.”

Israel Supreme Court Justice David Mintz, however, did not agree with his fellow justices and, in the court’s minority opinion, expressed why he saw no problem with the Reasonableness law.

“Annulling a Basic Law based on an amorphous doctrine and an undefined formula carries a heavy price from a democratic point of view, certainly when it comes to an issue about which the court itself is in an ‘institutional conflict of interest,’” he wrote.

Justice Mintz also wrote that this law, “does not give them [the government] complete and total discretion, and does not grant immunity for their decisions.”

While the ruling on the Reasonableness was in effect a close split decision, the other important ruling made by Israel’s Supreme Court was not. The Knesset had passed another law saying the court could not overturn a “Basic Law,” any law passed by the Knesset with an absolute majority of 61 or more of its 120 members voting in favor and designated as a law of government.

The Reasonableness law met this standard. But the court had already ruled 12 – 3 that it did have the power to review Basic Laws.