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Comment by yehosef | Hacker News Reader

The question he avoids is is it possible for the supreme court to have too much power? This is exactly what the other side says is happening. Today's vote was on a concept called "reasonableness" which means that the Supreme court (mostly left-wing) can veto legislation they deem "unreasonable". This is a power US citizens are not familiar with.

If any one of the branches has too much power there is a problem. I don't know if the right-suggestions are better, but I understand what they are fighting for.

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> This is a power US citizens are not familiar with.

For the US citizens: imagine that SCOTUS turns down affirmative action — not because "this Court has found affirmative action unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause", but because "this Court has found affirmative action highly unreasonable".

No, this is a terrible metaphor, because the 14th amendment in this example doesn't exist.

Imagine a US without a constitution, but instead it just has a big body of case law and precedent to go on. The judiciary's role is to adjudicate when that case law contradicts itself, and to decide if a given new law contradicts the rest of the case law.

The Knesset is limiting the judiciary's ability to review such things, which to an American is now analogous to Marbury v Madison being decided unconstitutional.

Amazing how, even here, the arguments made about this issue are disingenuous to outright misleading.

Israel has a body of Basic Laws, and Barak has declared that body to represent a Constitution.

The Supreme Court is doing a good job determining where a law contradicts a Basic Law, and invalidating that law because of a contradiction. E.g. Surrogacy law was returned to the legislative — not since it was "unreasonable", but because it was unequal. (The legislative fixed the law to include homosexuals, and the law passed.)

The "unreasonableness" clause is not the only tool SC has at their disposal. From now on, they can use the other tools — just not "we find this unreasonable".

> are disingenuous to outright misleading

HN Guidelines: "Assume good faith."

> just not "we find this unreasonable"

That's an over simplistic representation, which you may have done in good faith. The coalition MPs are making it very hard to assume that they spread this narrative in good faith.

The notion of Reasonability or Reasonableness is a well established legal principal [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonability

Thats essentially what they do.

There is lots of handwaving about how they are technically just interpreting the Constitution and federal law, but the U.S. Supreme Court has made political, subjective decisions for as long as the court has existed.

Now, if SCOTUS explicitly and deliberately violated the Constitution, that would be... something. But this is impossible in Israel, from what I understand.

If only Israel had a constitutional laws. In lack of the only democracy keeper is the supreme court

Israel has Basic Laws in lieu of Constitution, and Barak has declared the body of Basic Laws to be a Constitution.

UK, notably, also has no constitution — it however wouldn't be reasonable to argue that "the only democracy keeper [in the UK] is the supreme court".

> UK, notably, also has no constitution — it however wouldn't be reasonable to argue that "the only democracy keeper [in the UK] is the supreme court".

Exactly. IIRC, the UK didn't have anything called a "Supreme Court" until very recently (its highest "court" used to be a committee in the upper house of parliament), and even then it's clearly subordination to Parliament:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Court_of_the_United_Ki...:

> The United Kingdom has a doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty,[6] so the Supreme Court is much more limited in its powers of judicial review than the constitutional or supreme courts of some other countries. It cannot overturn any primary legislation [Acts of Parliament] made by Parliament. However, as with any law court in the UK, it can overturn secondary legislation [an American translation may be executive orders and agency regulations] if, for an example, that legislation is found to be ultra vires to the powers in primary legislation allowing it to be made.

Basic Law in Israel is made in the same process as regular law, so it can't be relied upon for depending the public from the regime.

The UK is a monarchy, so... In all seriousness, I don't know enough about UK law and government structure, but if I take what you said in face value, it may very well be that the UK's democracy is held by norms, and not government structure. That doesn't make it OK. It just means that they're prone to fall like other post democratic nations.

It may be that the supreme court has too much power, but the executive branch actually has executive power, which the court does not. In the meanwhile, the parliament is held hostage by the government, by the power of coalition and party discipline. An evidence for that is the total uniformity in how they vote for the problematic bills in question.

What issue specifically are the conservatives in Israel mad about? Settlements.

It's not about high political principles or abstract questions of balance of power. It's conservatives mad that the supreme court keeps finding settlements illegal.

That's it. That's all it is. That's why they care about it now, as opposed to any other time in Israel's history. The ultra Zionists are in power and they want to cement as much Jewish settlement for as long as they can.

That's what this is. It's simple.

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