Thread by @amramleifer

So, how many of the people ranting about Israel's judicial reform know what it actually contains?

Thankfully, I'm here to help. The reform contains five different measures: (1/16)

1. Ministers will be able to choose who represents them in court and which line of argumentation to use.

This is meant to correct a situation where legal advisors (appointed not by ministers but by jurists' committees on tender)... (2/16)

... are deemed by jurisprudence to have the right to give instructions to ministers (talk about separation of powers), are the only ones who can represent them in courts... and can refuse to do so, leaving them with no representation at all. (3/16)

The reform does not change the way legal advisors are appointed.

2. Judges will still be able to assess a governmental decision's "reasonable" character (over and beyond its actual legality), but they won't be able to strike it down on that basis alone. (4/16)

In order to do that, they'll need, y'know, some kind of law they can rely on.

3. Appointment committees for judges will not anymore have a majority of legal professionals, with a veto power for the judicial block. (5/16)

They will still include judges, but politicians will have a majority. However, that majority can only be reached when including a member of the opposition who will have a place reserved in these committees. (6/16)

4. Judges won't be able to strike down Basic Laws.

In a country without a Constitution, Basic Laws are adopted in the same way as simple laws and concern institutional arrangements and human rights. (7/16)

In a landmark 1995 decision (Mizrahi Bank), the Supreme Court decided it could strike down simple laws which did not comply with Basic Laws - thus jurisprudentially giving the latter constitutional force. (8/16)

Since no democracy anywhere allows judges to strike down the Constitution, that part of the reform is nothing more than a common sense consequence of the Mizrahi decision. (9/16)

5. The right of the Supreme Court to strike down laws, which until now was purely jurisprudential, will be enshrined into law. However, these decisions will need to be taken in a formation of 15 judges with a majority of 12. (10/16)

Furthermore, the Knesset may then overrule the Supreme Court if it finds a majority of 61 legislators out of 120 to vote in that way. (11/16)

It should be pointed out that Basic Laws, which the Supreme Court turned into Israel's Constitution, do not require a majority of 61 and can be changed by a simple majority of voters. Overturning the judicial annulment of a law... (12/16)

... will therefore be more difficult than changing the legal basis of that decision, which has the same result in practice.

That's it. No end of democracy, no end of Zionism, not even an end to the principle of checks and balances. (13/16)

Quite the contrary, in fact: checks and balances on the government and Parliament are preserved, and some are added to the, until now, unrestrained powers of the only branch of government that has no democratic legitimacy. (14/16)

Could that reform be improved? Sure, like every other reform. Does it justify the hysteric announcements, the road blockings, the international slander campaign against Israel by former Israeli officials? Based on the text, I don't think so. (15/16)

There is something deeply unhealthy in a political culture that replaces cold-headed analysis by crowd hysteria and end-of-the-world rhetoric each time one side doesn't get exactly what it wants. (16/16)