“Contrary to the claims of its opponents, who say that it will strip Israel of its checks and balances, judicial reform will restore the checks and balances that have been stripped away by a court system that has arrogated powers beyond its purview.”
Justice Minister Yariv Levin, in unveiling the “first stage” of the reform plan on Jan. 4, said that legal advisers are “advisers, not deciders, who represent the government and not their personal positions.” He called for an end to the “subjugation of the government to an unelected rank.”
Said Koppel, “The government should hear the advice of its lawyer and then decide whether it wants to take that advice, or doesn’t want to take that advice, just like anybody else in the world who has a lawyer.”
There have been instances where the attorney general has refused to represent the government in a case, while refusing to allow the government the right to hire private counsel, leaving the government without legal representation to defend itself in court. The reform will allow the government to hire its own counsel in such an event, Koppel said.
The second part of the reform concerns the way judges are appointed. Appointment of Supreme Court justices currently requires the approval of seven out of nine members of the Judicial Selection Committee. As three are justices they effectively have veto power. “It causes the court to be too homogeneous,” Koppel said. The reform will change the composition of the panel. There are discussions about how to do it, “but the short version is you want the judges to have less influence over the appointment of new judges.”
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