Issuing official opinion, AG says judicial overhaul will ‘gravely damage’ checks on power

Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara says the government’s plan to radically overhaul the justice system will cause significant harm to the democratic rule of law in Israel.

In an official 112-page opinion submitted to Justice Minister Yariv Levin, the attorney general says the proposal will “lead to grave damage to the system of checks and balances” between the authorities.

Baharav-Miara notes that many of her concerns “go to the root of the principle of separation of powers, judicial independence… and the protection of individual rights.”

Such an overhaul, she writes, will lead the government to “have broad and practically unlimited authority,” and harm the country’s status “as a Jewish and democratic state.”

Baharav-Miara says that while a democracy is based on “the principle of majority rule,” it must be coupled with the fact that “governing authorities cannot have unlimited power — which is a sure recipe for harming human rights.”