Judge who ‘inspired’ reasonableness bill says he did intend legislative changes

Supreme Court Justice Noam Sohlberg distances himself from the coalition’s bill to radically restrict the courts’ use of the judicial reasonableness standard, saying that when he discussed the notion in a lecture three years ago he did not mean that such restrictions should be imposed via legislation.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other senior government ministers have specifically cited elements of Sohlberg’s lecture — later formulated into a lengthy essay — in which he detailed his concerns about the use of reasonableness against policy decisions made by the government, as a way of legitimizing the current legislation.

Netanyahu even called the bill the “Sohlberg plan” in a video message explaining the rationale behind the legislation.

“I didn’t think then, three and a half years ago in that lecture, about an amendment through legislation. I thought about a trend that would come about through court rulings,” says Sohlberg, a conservative justice, in a statement issued via the courts spokesperson’s division.

“At the end of my lecture, I even emphasized that interpretation, reasonableness and proportionality ‘invite significant challenges, and oblige us to expand and deepen the important debate on the proper limits of judicial discretion.’”