Unreasonableness

A quick catch-up on where Israel stands judicially on the recent passage of the Reasonableness bill:

Unlike in US democracy, with a possible disconnect eg, between a Republican president and Democratic control of the House and Senate, plus an independent judiciary, Israel’s ruling coalition by definition controls the Knesset. The court is thus the only check-and-balance Israel has: Defanging the court’s power effectively gives the governing coalition total control over all three branches of government, jeopardizing Israel’s democracy.

The reasonableness bill that the Coalition just passed is one such way to defang the judiciary; it is an amendment to a Basic Law (basic laws are what Israel has in place of a constitution) that now won’t allow the courts to second guess the ‘reasonableness’ of such things as appointments (eg, Aryeh Deri, who was barred in January from being interior and health minister because of his repeated criminal convictions; or firing the attorney general, as members of the Coalition have already suggested.)

Likud’s Yariv Levin was particularly intent on passing reasonableness, since otherwise the courts could have used it to force him to convene the Judicial Selection Committee. (Levin wants to change the composition of that committee, and give the government more power in electing judges, compounding the all-the-power-in-one-hand problem.)

Itamar Ben-Gvir is hoping that reasonableness’s passage will help him advance a bill to prevent the attorney general from blocking a minister from doing something she deems illegal.

Now that the reasonableness bill has passed in the Knesset, Israel’s Supreme Court will be asked to rule on its legality.  But for the Supreme Court to rule on a basic law is unprecedented.