President Joe Biden has reportedly asked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to stop pushing through a “divisive” judicial overhaul bill amid protests.
This is the same Biden, incidentally, who crammed through a massive, highly “divisive,” generational spending bill with zero votes from the opposition; the same guy who regularly rules by unconstitutional executive diktats; and the same guy who has done more to delegitimize the Supreme Court than any president in modern history. Not exactly the moral high ground.
In any event, the president is concerned. As is The New York Times, which reports, “Israel’s Parliament passed a deeply contentious law limiting the Supreme Court’s ability to overturn decisions made by government ministers.” What the Times means is that there is a new law limiting the judiciary’s ability to unilaterally declare legislation “unconstitutional” without using any legal justification whatsoever.
Because, as it stands, Israel has a strong anti-democratic system overseen by a high court that is probably the most powerful judiciary in the free world. Netanyahu’s judicial reforms, only a small piece has passed, would bring Israel back all the way to 1995, when “judiciary revolution” imbued the court with supreme power over legislation. The alleged authoritarian “backsliding” by Israel’s “far-right” government — as if there is any other kind — would likely create a far more “democratic” system.
The judiciary primacy might work if the Israeli court’s decisions were grounded in some kind of statutory authority, traditional legal framework, or even existing regulation and law. But there is no
