On Wednesday night, Channel 12 News reported that by a narrow majority of one vote, the High Court of Justice will revolutionize and invalidate the Basic Law on Reasonableness. Israel Hayom has learned that in recent days, even before the publication, there has been real drama in the Supreme Court.
The only judge who did not submit his opinion in the ruling is Justice Noam Sohlberg, despite the fact that the deadline set for submitting the judges' opinion has already passed last week.
Articles by law professors Yuval Albashan and Yedidia Stern calling for refraining from publication during wartime circulated among the justices. Hayut and Fogelman feared that they would influence Solberg, and Fogelman's office approached Justice Solberg's office several times to question the matter. In the background, there are calls on social networks for judges not to sign the ruling.
Fogelman's concern does not come in a vacuum; recently, several judges asked to hold a hearing on the question of issuing such a ruling in wartime, but their requests were rejected. The publication and leak of the ruling increased pressure on Solberg to disseminate his opinion to the justices.
The law allows for the publication of judgments in which members of judges retire three months from the date of their retirement. For Justices Hayut and Baron, the date will begin in two weeks. It is unclear how the justices thought they could overcome the limitation without excluding Hayut and Baron from the ruling, which would have reversed the outcome and led to the dismissal of the petitions, a result that other judges would have vetoed.
It should be noted that such an incident almost happened, when government counsel Ilan Bombach asked for postponements in granting responses due to the tight timeframe he was assigned to respond to, a meeting of judges was held on the matter. Most of the justices thought that a postponement should be allowed, and Fogelman also supported it.
This could have led, though not necessarily, to the removal of the judges from the ruling, as also happened in the High Court of Justice Committee for the Selection of Judges. Some time after that meeting, Judge Yael Willner circulated an email calling on the justices to change the decision. After another round of consultations between the justices, it was decided not to allow another postponement. Justice Anat Baron responded to Willner, who understood that already at the first meeting it had been decided not to allow. As far as Israel Hayom knows, no official minutes of the meeting were distributed to the judges.
It is interesting to note that Justice Willner is among the group of judges in the minority opinion to reject the petitions. However, in its opinion that will be published, it will carry out a kind of "sustainable interpretation" so that while it rejects the petitions but tries to prevent the damage that it believes exists in the Basic Law.
Supreme Court sources told Israel Hayom that the most extreme activist opinions are those of Justice Yitzhak Amit, a candidate for president of the Supreme Court, and retiring Justice Anat Baron. So extreme that even Justice Amit himself recently consulted several associates and judges on the question of whether he did not exaggerate the rhetoric he employed. In his opinion, Amit states that the Basic Law of Reasonableness should be invalidated by virtue of the doctrine of the "unconstitutional constitutional amendment," which will be enshrined in Israel for the first time.
Justice Amit will explain in his opinion that his position was formulated not only because of the law itself, but because of Justice Minister Levin's radical and comprehensive legal reform, and that the Supreme Court is the main engine of democracy.
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