Coalition said planning bill to shield overhaul legislation from future repeal bids

Coalition leaders reportedly want to advance legislation that would raise the voting threshold the Knesset would have clear, if it in the future wanted to repeal the judicial overhaul bills the government is pushing to anchor in law.

According to a Sunday Haaretz report, several unnamed ministers have recently discussed a proposal that would make it more difficult for lawmakers to both legislate and amend Basic Laws. Though they are endowed with quasi-constitutional status, Basic Laws are passed through the same legislative process as all other laws and can in many cases be amended with a simple parliamentary majority.

Fearing that their proposals to shift powers away from the courts and into politicians’ hands could be reversed by a future Knesset they don’t control, the coalition chiefs want to pass their judicial shakeup plans as amendments to existing Basic Laws, then approve a new one delineating the status of the Basic Laws and under what conditions they can be altered, the report said.

No specific piece of legislation on the matter has yet been drafted, but the bill is not expected to include any mention of the High Court of Justice’s authority to strike down laws that contravene Basic Laws.

The newspaper said the measure would be aimed at placing guardrails around three far-reaching initiatives the government is seeking to advance: blocking the High Court from exercising judicial review over the reasonableness of government decisions, restructuring the committee that selects judges to give the coalition more control, and turning ministry legal advisers into political appointees whose advice is not legally binding.

“It’s impossible to know what will happen, and in any case we need to ensure the reform won’t be nixed,” a senior coalition official was quoted as saying.

Coalition and opposition negotiators discussed legislation that would address the Basic Laws during now-frozen talks on judicial reform mediated by President Isaac Herzog. As part of a compromise offer unveiled in March, Herzog proposed giving the Basic Laws greater constitutional heft by shielding them from judicial review while introducing an additional vote they would need to pass before becoming law requiring a majority of at least 80 MKs.

The report came as the Knesset’s Constitution, Law and Justice Committee was slated to further deliberate the so-called “reasonableness” bill, whose submission to the panel last week marked the formal resumption of the government’s efforts to radically remake the judicial system. In response, protest organizers have vowed to ramp up demonstrations.

Reasonableness has been the primary judicial check against appointments. It was used earlier this year to remove Shas leader Aryeh Deri from twin cabinet postings — as minister of health and the interior — citing his recent tax offenses and past bribery conviction, and his ostensible commitment to quit the Knesset as part of a plea bargain.

Rather than merely tighten the conditions under which courts could evaluate the reasonableness of a government decision, the coalition proposal seeks to completely remove court oversight over a range of decisions made by potentially any elected official.

The court would still be able to use the reasonableness test against decisions made by non-elected officials and would be able to apply other judicial and statutory tests, where applicable.

The bill was prioritized by the coalition shortly after opposition lawmakers withdrew from judicial reform compromise talks following a stymied election of MKs to the Judicial Selection Committee in June. Opposition lawmakers have warned that without the reasonableness protection, the government would be able to fire the attorney general and appoint personal cronies in her place.