What is behind the dramatic words:
President Herzog did a good thing tonight (Sunday) when he put his hand in the fire of controversy and paved the way for the beginning of an agreed path in the legislation of the reform of the judicial system.
The constitutional revolution of Aharon Barak was made without agreement or negotiation, without the intervention of the president of the country.
It would be good if the political system would avoid repeating Barak's many mistakes and reach an agreed outline.
Part of the president's proposal is good, part is not, and part leaves the sting and is irrelevant.
The president proposes to enact the Basic Law of Legislation which will determine how basic laws are enacted.
This is essential legislation.
Basic laws enacted according to the provisions of the Basic Legislation Law will be protected from judicial review.
But we have come this far because the High Court has overstepped the bounds of the legislative authority. The elected officials will say, first we will limit the trespasser, then we will limit ourselves. The president chose to limit the legislator first. It is doubtful that the coalition will agree to that.
President Herzog: "We are just before an explosion" // Photo: Leam
Regarding judicial review of ordinary laws, the President suggests that the High Court of Justice can invalidate laws "using the composition and a majority determined by consensus". However, this is the point of contention, there is no agreement. The President of the Supreme Court and the Ombudsman are not prepared to invalidate a law with a majority of 13 judges out of 15.
Anything below that the coalition will not agree to and rightly so.
Disqualification of a law is a dramatic event and certainty is required that any legal norm has indeed been exceeded.
Herzog has no real news in the committee for selecting judges.
On the one hand, elected officials and judges will receive the same number of representatives, thus actually increasing(!) the number of judges in the committee, and in addition, the group of elected officials will have representation for the opposition.
That means the number of coalition members will decrease even more than it has been so far.
Herzog during the compromise speech, photo: Haim Tzach/L.A.M
Regarding the reason for reasonableness, the president proposes not to cancel it as Rothman and Levin want, but to reduce it so that a difference is enacted between the intervention in the decision of an elected level and a funded-official level.
In doing so, he actually almost adopts the "Solberg outline", this is the proposal of the conservative judge Noam Solberg to reduce the reason of reasonableness, but Solberg called for its cancellation as far as the elected rank is concerned, the president only indicated that there would be a difference and not the outline of what it is.
Less than the Solberg outline will not be accepted in the coalition, and it is doubtful that the judges will agree to it.
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