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"Judicial review" in Israel is a unilateral and unjustified assertion of authority. It's not found in any sort of basic law and is incredibly uncommon in the k

"Judicial review" in Israel is a unilateral and unjustified assertion of authority. It's not found in any sort of basic law and is incredibly uncommon in the kind of parliamentary supremacist unitary state (ie no tradition of institutional balance-of-power) Israel thought they were setting up ab initio. It's also obviously incestuous for a body to choose their own replacements as the Israeli supreme court does. On face, it's far more defensible for the body with an explicit democratic mandate to reign in the body that does not, than the reverse.

bell-cot 4y ago
"Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?" - Henry II "How can I rid myself of that too-honest court?" - Pretty much every rotten politician, ever, who's faced the possibility of serious legal consequences
woodruffw 4y ago
> On face, it's far more defensible for the body with an explicit democratic mandate to reign in the body that does not, than the reverse. Which is why, ordinarily, we try and do justice to our and others’ understandings by not stopping at superficial analyses. Judicial review has empirically strengthened democracies, rather than weakening them. Democracies that weaken or capture their independent judiciaries tend to undergo democratic backsliding, especially under reactionary governments.
- slavboj 4y ago
  It's oxymoronic to say that removing final authority to an unelected body that effectively chooses their own successors "strengthens democracy" in some metaphysical sense. The logical implication is that an unelected self-perpetuating supreme court in absolute control of the country would be the be the strongest democracy of all.
  - curiousllama 4y ago
    I’m not familiar with Israeli politics or government, but it’s certainly not oximoronic. Strengthens democracy != is itself democratic Eg, the US requiring a supermajority for impeachment is antidemocratic (the minority decides), but it strengthens democracy (because it shouldn’t be done by one side alone). This is a pretty core principle of democratic government
  - cma 4y ago
    Is this even true that they chose their own replacements? > Since 1953, Israel has selected its judges through a diverse committee composed of three Supreme Court justices, two government ministers, two members of the Knesset, and two members of the Israel Bar Association. To appoint a Supreme Court justice, a seven-vote majority of the nine-member committee is required, which means that no group can act alone. Judges can veto what the politicians want, and the politicians can veto what the judges want. This has led to a system of consensus-building and bargaining that produces judges who are for the most part perceived as centrists. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/israel/end-israeli-democracy https://www.foreignaffairs.com/israel/end-israeli-democracy https://archive.is/evodh https://archive.is/evodh Does that not apply to the Supreme Court, only other judiciary?
    - slavboj 4y ago
      The three judicial appointees can veto any selection, and are by far the most cohesive and only long-lived subgroup of that panel. In practice they run the show.
      - cma 4y ago
        Having a veto is very different than you described it. The non-judicial side does too even if their terms are shorter.
        nhchris 4y ago
        But if the judges veto, their power is, if anything, strengthened - it keeps the supreme court in their hands. I.e. they only share power with judges of their choice, or no-one. And they can easily wait-out short-term politicians and get the appointments they want with their successors.
        cma 4y ago
        Their power is strengthened as compared to simply choosing their own successors as was claimed? I'm not sure it is a great system, but America has stuff like the court packing scheme that this does seem to at least prevent.
  - woodruffw 4y ago
    > The logical implication is that an unelected self-perpetuating supreme court in absolute control of the country would be the be the strongest democracy of all. No: we’re talking about a judicial branch that exists within an elective system of government. The logical extension of that is not dictatorship. We can discard metaphysics: independent judiciaries strengthen democracy by limiting the ability of executive and legislative authorities to undermine their own mandate to govern.
    - slavboj 4y ago
      Again, they are self-selecting. No one gets to vote on their replacements, in practice no one gets to vote on the people who vote on their replacements. It's crazy to talk about "empirically strengthening democracy" without recourse to the actual functioning of the actual supreme court. Just because someone writes a paper complaining about the Polish government firing holdovers from a literal totalitarian regime, or noting that communist regimes usually gut all organs of government when they take over, you don't get to extrapolate to wildly different circumstances and say "thank god no one gets to vote on this, it would be Very Dangerous For Our Democracy."
      - woodruffw 4y ago
        You’ve repeated this, but everything I can find online indicates that Israel’s Supreme Court is appointed by the president, after candidate selection by a committee. Some of the Supreme Court justices are on the committee, but they don’t form a majority (they seem to have 3 of 9 votes.) Is it the perfect, ideal judicial selection process? Almost certainly not. But it’s not incestuous or unaccountable in the way you’re claiming.
        slavboj 4y ago
        The 3 can veto any appointment since a supermajority is required for nomination, and they typically vote in unison as they are the only cohesive group on the panel due to 75 years of accreted groupthink (ie the supreme court members only allow the appointment of candidates that will get along with them). It's absolutely unaccountable.
libeclipse 4y ago
Bro thinks handing a majoritarian government unlimited, unchecked power is the solution lol Democracy breaks when power is concentrated.
- slavboj 4y ago
  If your supreme court is issuing diktats to executive agencies they are extremely part of the government. I don't know of any state where "the government" writ large doesn't assert absolute power; we are discussing the components and functioning of said government.
eynsham 4y ago
I think the argument is fundamentally hobbled because its authors refuse to cite the current political situation as a reason for its opposition to the changes. There have been times and places where the proposed balance of judicial and legislative power would not have led to a dangerous descent into autocracy. That’s a function the political culture and inclinations of those at the time. The problem is that Netenyahu’s bloc will, given untrammelled power, attempt to ensconce itself in parliament forever, just as Orban and Modi did. That is fact specific to those times and places, and is essential to the argument.
andrepd 4y ago
>It's not found in any sort of basic law and is incredibly uncommon in the kind of parliamentary supremacist unitary state I'm admittedly not an expert in comparative law, but I can think of several states with parliamentary supremacy and supreme/constitutional courts with the power to veto laws.
Convolutional 4y ago
> democratic mandate Democratic? Two million Palestinians live in the West Bank and have had no vote in the Israeli parliament since the occupation started, an occupation condemned by multiple UN resolutions.
- nhchris 4y ago
  They are the wrong demos.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
bndkl 4y ago
You can discuss how the judges are replaced, but according to the WaPo the reform abolishes all checks and balances: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/02/14/israel-judiciary-overhaul-democracy/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/02/14/israel-judic... "On the table are several bills amending Israel’s “basic laws” — legally equivalent to constitutional amendments — which would grant Knesset lawmakers control over judicial appointments, eliminate judicial review of legislation and allow parliament to vote down Supreme Court decisions." The last part means that the 51% always get their way, which a supreme court is supposed to prevent.
arp242 4y ago
Having laws tested by courts is not a very special idea; it's exactly what the Supreme Court in the United States does. Other countries have different systems; the Upper House (e.g. House of Lords in the UK, or Senate in many European countries) do this. Neither system is perfect and both have their up- and downsides, but these systems exist for a reason. You really want to make sure the basic principles of your democracy and society are upheld – as codified in the Basic Law in Israel – and can't "just" be overruled with a simple 51% majority just because this one election swung that way. Some things could probably be reformed; that judges choose their own replacement for example – although making this a political process also has its downsides, as we've seen in the US – but that's not really what people are worried about. The problem with the current proposal any checks and balances can be overrides with little more than a shrug, reducing the court to an advisory organ rather than any real "checks and balances" power. And what's worse all of this is done over a fairly small set of issues – mostly Jewish settlements and some related issues – which smells of scorched earth politics. And that the whole "Israel is for the Jewish people" Basic Law got approved by the courts proves it's not as left-wing biased as is claimed.

bell-cot 4y ago

"Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?" - Henry II "How can I rid myself of that too-honest court?" - Pretty much every rotten politician, ever, who's faced the possibility of serious legal consequences

woodruffw 4y ago

> On face, it's far more defensible for the body with an explicit democratic mandate to reign in the body that does not, than the reverse. Which is why, ordinarily, we try and do justice to our and others’ understandings by not stopping at superficial analyses. Judicial review has empirically strengthened democracies, rather than weakening them. Democracies that weaken or capture their independent judiciaries tend to undergo democratic backsliding, especially under reactionary governments.

slavboj 4y ago
It's oxymoronic to say that removing final authority to an unelected body that effectively chooses their own successors "strengthens democracy" in some metaphysical sense. The logical implication is that an unelected self-perpetuating supreme court in absolute control of the country would be the be the strongest democracy of all.
- curiousllama 4y ago
  I’m not familiar with Israeli politics or government, but it’s certainly not oximoronic. Strengthens democracy != is itself democratic Eg, the US requiring a supermajority for impeachment is antidemocratic (the minority decides), but it strengthens democracy (because it shouldn’t be done by one side alone). This is a pretty core principle of democratic government
- cma 4y ago
  Is this even true that they chose their own replacements? > Since 1953, Israel has selected its judges through a diverse committee composed of three Supreme Court justices, two government ministers, two members of the Knesset, and two members of the Israel Bar Association. To appoint a Supreme Court justice, a seven-vote majority of the nine-member committee is required, which means that no group can act alone. Judges can veto what the politicians want, and the politicians can veto what the judges want. This has led to a system of consensus-building and bargaining that produces judges who are for the most part perceived as centrists. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/israel/end-israeli-democracy https://www.foreignaffairs.com/israel/end-israeli-democracy https://archive.is/evodh https://archive.is/evodh Does that not apply to the Supreme Court, only other judiciary?
  - slavboj 4y ago
    The three judicial appointees can veto any selection, and are by far the most cohesive and only long-lived subgroup of that panel. In practice they run the show.
    - cma 4y ago
      Having a veto is very different than you described it. The non-judicial side does too even if their terms are shorter.
      - nhchris 4y ago
        But if the judges veto, their power is, if anything, strengthened - it keeps the supreme court in their hands. I.e. they only share power with judges of their choice, or no-one. And they can easily wait-out short-term politicians and get the appointments they want with their successors.
        cma 4y ago
        Their power is strengthened as compared to simply choosing their own successors as was claimed? I'm not sure it is a great system, but America has stuff like the court packing scheme that this does seem to at least prevent.
- woodruffw 4y ago
  > The logical implication is that an unelected self-perpetuating supreme court in absolute control of the country would be the be the strongest democracy of all. No: we’re talking about a judicial branch that exists within an elective system of government. The logical extension of that is not dictatorship. We can discard metaphysics: independent judiciaries strengthen democracy by limiting the ability of executive and legislative authorities to undermine their own mandate to govern.
  - slavboj 4y ago
    Again, they are self-selecting. No one gets to vote on their replacements, in practice no one gets to vote on the people who vote on their replacements. It's crazy to talk about "empirically strengthening democracy" without recourse to the actual functioning of the actual supreme court. Just because someone writes a paper complaining about the Polish government firing holdovers from a literal totalitarian regime, or noting that communist regimes usually gut all organs of government when they take over, you don't get to extrapolate to wildly different circumstances and say "thank god no one gets to vote on this, it would be Very Dangerous For Our Democracy."
    - woodruffw 4y ago
      You’ve repeated this, but everything I can find online indicates that Israel’s Supreme Court is appointed by the president, after candidate selection by a committee. Some of the Supreme Court justices are on the committee, but they don’t form a majority (they seem to have 3 of 9 votes.) Is it the perfect, ideal judicial selection process? Almost certainly not. But it’s not incestuous or unaccountable in the way you’re claiming.
      - slavboj 4y ago
        The 3 can veto any appointment since a supermajority is required for nomination, and they typically vote in unison as they are the only cohesive group on the panel due to 75 years of accreted groupthink (ie the supreme court members only allow the appointment of candidates that will get along with them). It's absolutely unaccountable.

libeclipse 4y ago

Bro thinks handing a majoritarian government unlimited, unchecked power is the solution lol Democracy breaks when power is concentrated.

slavboj 4y ago
If your supreme court is issuing diktats to executive agencies they are extremely part of the government. I don't know of any state where "the government" writ large doesn't assert absolute power; we are discussing the components and functioning of said government.

eynsham 4y ago

I think the argument is fundamentally hobbled because its authors refuse to cite the current political situation as a reason for its opposition to the changes. There have been times and places where the proposed balance of judicial and legislative power would not have led to a dangerous descent into autocracy. That’s a function the political culture and inclinations of those at the time. The problem is that Netenyahu’s bloc will, given untrammelled power, attempt to ensconce itself in parliament forever, just as Orban and Modi did. That is fact specific to those times and places, and is essential to the argument.

andrepd 4y ago

>It's not found in any sort of basic law and is incredibly uncommon in the kind of parliamentary supremacist unitary state I'm admittedly not an expert in comparative law, but I can think of several states with parliamentary supremacy and supreme/constitutional courts with the power to veto laws.

Convolutional 4y ago

> democratic mandate Democratic? Two million Palestinians live in the West Bank and have had no vote in the Israeli parliament since the occupation started, an occupation condemned by multiple UN resolutions.

nhchris 4y ago
They are the wrong demos.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

bndkl 4y ago

You can discuss how the judges are replaced, but according to the WaPo the reform abolishes all checks and balances: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/02/14/israel-judiciary-overhaul-democracy/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/02/14/israel-judic... "On the table are several bills amending Israel’s “basic laws” — legally equivalent to constitutional amendments — which would grant Knesset lawmakers control over judicial appointments, eliminate judicial review of legislation and allow parliament to vote down Supreme Court decisions." The last part means that the 51% always get their way, which a supreme court is supposed to prevent.

arp242 4y ago

Having laws tested by courts is not a very special idea; it's exactly what the Supreme Court in the United States does. Other countries have different systems; the Upper House (e.g. House of Lords in the UK, or Senate in many European countries) do this. Neither system is perfect and both have their up- and downsides, but these systems exist for a reason. You really want to make sure the basic principles of your democracy and society are upheld – as codified in the Basic Law in Israel – and can't "just" be overruled with a simple 51% majority just because this one election swung that way. Some things could probably be reformed; that judges choose their own replacement for example – although making this a political process also has its downsides, as we've seen in the US – but that's not really what people are worried about. The problem with the current proposal any checks and balances can be overrides with little more than a shrug, reducing the court to an advisory organ rather than any real "checks and balances" power. And what's worse all of this is done over a fairly small set of issues – mostly Jewish settlements and some related issues – which smells of scorched earth politics. And that the whole "Israel is for the Jewish people" Basic Law got approved by the courts proves it's not as left-wing biased as is claimed.