Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Dedi Firestone's avatar

If you are a prophet,Gary, I sure hope your final note of optimism holds, and leads us to a better future.

Expand full comment
turksters's avatar

Too many of us accuse Netanyahu and the elected majority of Knesset members of destroying the legal system (and democracy) in Israel. Far from it - and indeed, the opposite is true.

If it is so important to allow courts to evaluate and overturn laws based on the particular judges' personal views of reasonableness, why isn't that principle enshrined in U.S. law?

The answer is simple: Our legislatures are constitutionally chartered to enact laws, the lawfulness of which is measured against our Constitution. If we were to allow judges to decide what is "reasonable" - a determination that lacks any objective measure - our laws would be subject to repeated challenges with wholly unpredictable outcomes. And even though our Supreme Court may sometimes toss out previous determinations (like Roe v. Wade) that a law is constitutional, at least our courts have a document (the Constitution) to use in measuring the legality of a law.

Israel, unfortunately, lacks a Constitution against which the acceptability of a law may be evaluated. That's the problem. Allowing the supreme test of lawfulness to be delegated to a cabal of unelected judges, who then are free to opine subjectively on the "reasonableness" of a law, is not the solution.

Expand full comment
17 more comments...

No posts