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ParaBrutus t1_jb26s9v wrote

Reply to comment by YUKL27 in Dozens of Israeli reserve pilots ditch drill to protest judicial overhaul by Dirty_Quesadilla

This seems like a relatively fair description: https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2023/03/01/israel-judicial-reforms-protests-against-netanyahu-risks-to-economy.html

The biggest items are allowing the Knesset to override supreme court rulings with a bare majority (61/120 votes) and removing the ability of Israel’s Supreme Court to review the “reasonableness” of laws and regulations.

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Shturm-7-0 t1_jb3b0nn wrote

So TLDR he's trying to make it so that he can get the Knesset to get him off the hook for corruption charges?

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EagleRise t1_jb59oe1 wrote

Basically. The Israeli system requires that a government will have a simple majority to assume power after an election. So by giving the Kneset the ability to ignore the supreme court with a simple majority basically strips the court of its power.

He's also pushing for politicians to have majority power in the selection of judges, right now they do not have large influence on the process.

He's also trying to make the process by which the supreme court can bring legislation to question harder, by requiring a majority of 12 out of 15 judges to initiate.

In some ways it brings the system somewhere closer to the usa system, but the big difference is that the ruling government always has majority of the house in Israel.

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ParaBrutus t1_jb6apeg wrote

To be fair, the legislature can override the Supreme Court in every parliamentary system; if there’s no constitution preserving power for the Supreme Court (like in the US) then legislatures can always restrict the courts’ powers. For example, nothing is stopping Britain’s parliament from dissolving their supreme court, and unlike Israel the British high court has no power to overrule parliamentary legislation for any reason.

What makes the US system unique is that it is uniquely counter-majoritarian. The constitution giving SCOTUS its status as a co-equal branch of government cannot be amended unless 2/3 of congress (or 2/3s of states) propose an amendment, and then 3/4ths of all 50 state legislatures ratify it. That means theoretically 90% of the population could support abolishing or reforming the Supreme Court and if even just 13 of the smallest-population states oppose ratification then nothing happens.

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