Committee vote on ‘reasonableness’ bill held up amid deluge of reservations submitted

By Jeremy Sharon

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17 July 2023, 6:06 pm

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Jeremy Sharon is The Times of Israel’s legal affairs and settlements reporter

Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee chairman MK Simcha Rothman (left) leads a committee meeting on a bill to severely limit the courts' use of the reasonableness standard, July 16, 2023. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

Voting in the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee on the more than 27,000 reservations submitted against the coalition’s law to radically limit the courts’ use of the reasonableness standard has yet to begin since opposition party leaders have not yet decided which option presented by the Knesset legal adviser they will adopt for the voting process.

Due to the unprecedented number of reservations drawn up by opposition committee MKs, Knesset Legal Adviser Sagit Afik suggests several options for completing the voting process.

Afik says the coalition and opposition could agree on some changes to the bill in return for reducing the number of reservations; or opposition MKs could be given 18 hours to explain the reservations, and then the committee would vote on bundles of reservations in batches of 20, allowing for some 1,500 separate votes; or each batch of reservations could be explained and then voted on one by one but in larger batches, amounting to several hundred votes.

The committee will reconvene once the Knesset plenum agenda is completed, which has been truncated in order to allow the Constitution Committee more time to conduct the voting process.

“I want to thank the members of the opposition for their integrity for not agreeing to advance any compromise on this bill for what they call dangerous legislation,” says Rothman sarcastically during the debate on the process, and accuses the opposition MKs of unreasonable behavior by submitting such massive numbers of reservations.

Yesh Atid MK Yoav Segalovich rejects Rothman’s claims, saying the committee chair failed to amend the bill despite the urging of several experts who addressed the committee and recommended changes be made to the legislation.

“You didn’t allow for a real dialogue in committee in this repressive process,” fumes Segalovitch, and points out that numerous legal advisers from different government departments were prevented from addressing the committee and explaining the consequences of the bill.