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Israel’s Supreme Court has begun hearing a challenge to a controversial law passed by Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government, in a landmark case that could spark a constitutional showdown between the country’s branches of government.
The law, which limits the Supreme Court’s ability to block government decisions, is the first plank of a judicial overhaul planned by Netanyahu’s coalition that has triggered the biggest domestic crisis in Israel’s history, sparking months of protests, spooking investors and opening up fissures in the country’s military.
Passed in July, the law has been challenged by opposition politicians and civil society groups, who regard it and the government’s broader overhaul as a politically motivated assault on Israel’s checks and balances that will undermine minority rights, foster corruption and damage the economy.
However, ministers say the changes are needed to rein in an overly activist judiciary, and some have suggested they could ignore a ruling against the law — a scenario that would tip Israel into a constitutional crisis.
For the first time in Israeli history, all 15 of the top court’s judges are sitting on the panel hearing the challenge, in a sign of the case’s significance. Israeli media reported that the judges involved in the case had been given extra security protection, while television stations have been broadcasting round-the-clock coverage from the court. The liberal Haaretz newspaper dubbed Tuesday’s hearing “the most important in Israel’s legal history”.
“It’s a historic day,” said Noa Sattath, head of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, one of the groups that challenged the law. “This is the first opportunity to more closely understand the court’s response to the overhaul. The hearing is important in its own terms. But its importance is heightened because [the law] is the first step in a larger plan.”
The court is expected to take weeks, or even months, to deliver a ruling on the July law, which prevents the top court from using a principle of reasonableness to strike down government decisions, such as ministerial appointments. The hearing is the first of three high-profile challenges to the government’s agenda that will come before the top court this month.
Next week, it will hear a challenge to the justice minister’s refusal to convene the body that appoints judges, after the government’s efforts to gain control of it earlier this year failed. And on September 28, it will hear a challenge to an amendment that made it harder to declare the prime minister incapacitated and remove him or her from office.
Government officials have criticised the challenges, with Yariv Levin, the justice minister, claiming on Tuesday that the Supreme Court did not have the authority to review the July law, as it had been passed as an amendment to one of Israel’s quasi-constitutional “basic laws”.
“The court . . . is placing itself above the government, above the Knesset [parliament], above the people and above the law,” he said. “The very discussion about the possibility of striking down basic laws, which are the top of the legal pyramid in Israel, and the possibility of declaring the prime minister incapacitated, are mortal damage to a government by the people.”
However, Yair Lapid, leader of the largest opposition grouping Yesh Atid, dismissed Levin’s criticism, arguing that the way the government had passed the amendment was “thuggish”.
“This piece of legislation isn’t worth holding a national fight over. Anyone who wants basic laws to be treated as sacrosanct should begin by passing them properly,” he wrote on social media platform X, formerly Twitter.
“The [top court] shouldn’t address the substance of the law. It should only say to the government: ‘Do you want us not to discuss basic laws? Then legislate them properly.’”
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