Better To Drop Judicial Reform Than Accept President's Proposal

Better To Drop Judicial Reform Than Accept President’s Proposal
Dr. Aaron Lerner 16 March 2023

Legal experts from both sides who joined together in herculean efforts to
come up with workable reasonable compromise proposals discovered tonight
that President Herzog was playing them for foolish pawns.

This evening President Herzog proposed:

#1. To turn the legal counsel into the dictator in each ministry by
establishing that their interpretation of the law is binding. So if the
legal counsel say “you cannot do X because I think it violates the law” it
does not matter if a thousand other lawyers think it does not.

#2. To enable a simple majority of the Supreme Court to force the Knesset to
revise laws it doesn’t like.

#3 To strip the ruling coalition of the possibility of appointing truly
conservative judges to the Supreme Court by giving 4 seats on the committee
to the ruling coalition, 5 to the Supreme Court judges and the opposition
MKs and 2 to people which must be approved by the head of the Supreme Court.

There’s much more.

President Herzog’s proposal is a dead letter as it would leave us in a worse
legal situation than what we have today.

This time it looks like we should give a victory to the “the ends justify
the means” school.

Yes, its not democratic that a group of people can close off our roads and
set a torch to our economy in order to impose their will.

And yes, I recognize that now that the left has seen how effective
threatening the destruction of the country is as a weapon they will most
certainly be tempted to use it again.

But in this Judgment of Solomon we, as the ones who do not want our Jewish
State torn asunder, are better off dropping judicial reform for now than
continuing the process.

There are a lot of lessons to be learned.

And a lot of developments on the ground that may be needed before this
weapon is neutralized.

There’s a concern that national camp parties will take a bashing in the next
elections if we stand down on judicial reform.

But the next elections are years away from now.

And there are so many other things going on that by the time we go to the
polls there will be a multitude of other concerns as well as other
opportunities to deliver tangible achievements to the constituents.

I choose life for the Jewish State.
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