Politics

Israel’s Supreme Court Holds Critical Hearing on Judicial Reform

Jerusalem, Sept 12 (EFE).- Israel’s Supreme Court began on Tuesday a crucial hearing to analyze several appeals filed against the judicial reform promoted by Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.

For the first time in history, the Supreme Court’s 15 justices met Tuesday to consider appeals of a law passed in July that overturned the Reasonableness Doctrine, which allowed the court to review and overturn government decisions.

This hearing has attracted the attention of the entire Israeli society, after a long day of protests on Monday in favor of the Court’s intervention to overturn the measure.

The demonstrations brought together tens of thousands of people in Jerusalem, following more than eight months of weekly protests against a reform that would give the Executive more power in detriment of the Judiciary.

Members of the government, the most right-wing in Israel’s history, have recently warned that a decision by the SC against the law would put Israeli democracy in check and have threatened not to abide by the ruling.

Justice Minister and one of the leading architects of the reform, Yair Levin, issued a statement in which he denounced that “the Court is putting itself above the Government, the Knesset (Parliament), the people and the law.”

For his part, former Prime Minister and current opposition leader, Yair Lapid, responded through his social networks that “the Knesset will accept any ruling of the Supreme Court.”

The law is an amendment to one of Israel’s basic laws. It is one of the pillars of the Government’s reform plan, which seeks to grant more power to the Executive to the detriment of the Judiciary, whose independence would be profoundly undermined.

Although never in the history of the Jewish State has the Supreme Court interceded before an amendment to a fundamental law, different Israeli analysts have pointed out that this is an unprecedented and uncertain case.

Information has yet to be released on how long the judges will take to reach a verdict. However, local media anticipated that it could take several weeks. EFE

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