Coalition to bring Knesset motion declaring High Court orders against Basic Laws ‘null and void’

In the latest move by the government against the High Court of Justice, the Knesset will debate and vote on a motion next week to declare that any court orders opposing amendments to quasi-constitutional Basic Laws are void.

Justice Minister Yariv Levin says he, along with Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana and Likud MK Avichay Boaron, led the drive for such a motion.

“A High Court of Justice decision to issue a provisional order against an amendment to a Basic Law is done without authority, and is null and void,” reads the motion.

Such motions do not have the force of law, but would symbolically pit the Knesset against the High Court, and further prepare the ground for the government to disobey the court over such decisions, which would create a severe constitutional crisis.

In an unprecedented ruling in January 2024, the High Court struck down the government’s amendment to Basic Law: The Judiciary to abolish the judicial principle of reasonableness, asserting that it violated Israel’s fundamental democratic character and was therefore an unconstitutional amendment.

And in December last year, it issued a provisional order requiring the government to justify another amendment, also to Basic Law: The Judiciary, which it passed in March increasing political control over the judicial selection process.

The government has until February 1 to respond to that order.

“Members of the Knesset stand by the authority of the Knesset, including the legislation of Basic Laws, and refuse to meekly accept the undemocratic effort to trample its authorities without any legal authority,” Boaron writes in the explanatory notes of his motion.

The High Court in its decision on the reasonableness law asserted that if a Basic Law or an amendment to one undermines the key characteristics of the State of Israel as a Jewish and a democratic country, the High Court has the authority to strike it down.