On September 12, 2023, the Supreme Court held a hearing on the petitions against an amendment to the Basic Law: The Judiciary, which eliminates the Courts’s authority to overturn decisions by the Government and the ministers on the grounds of “unreasonableness.” The petitioners and the Attorney General argue that the amendment should be nullified, due both to flaws in the legislative process and to its contradicting the core values of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state. The Government and the Knesset, on the...
Click here to read the full research paper on the subject
Israel is facing an ominous combination of severe threats to its national security, widening rifts in its relations with the US, and increasing economic risks amid the global economic crisis. At the same time, Israeli society is in the midst of an unprecedented internal conflict stemming from the proposed judicial reform, which magnifies these threats and impairs our ability to tackle them. Without dwelling on the controversial contents of the reform, this much is clear: the...
Against the background of proposals for change to the judicial system in Israel and its relations with the government and the Knesset, this paper contends that loss of judicial independence and effective oversight of the government – as denoted by current political initiatives – could cause severe harm to the national security of the State of Israel.
The paper starts with an examination of whether and to what extent the independence of the courts and their supervision of the government affect Israel’s national security; this is...
