Another nod to Biden? Netanyahu looking to soften limits on reasonableness clause

Amendment’s key backer, MK Simcha Rothman, said he doesn’t know about any such move.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is considering softening the bill limiting the scope of the reasonableness clause at the last minute, Kan News reported Tuesday.

One of the options he is discussing with associates is narrowing down the law so that individual ministers’ decisions can be overturned if the Supreme Court decides that they are “unreasonable.” An addition may also be added that states that it is the “duty” of ministers to act reasonably.

Decisions made by the government as a whole would still be protected from being reviewed by this standard, which its critics maintain is too subjective and vague to be used by unelected justices as a means of invalidating a government’s actions after it has been elected by the people to carry out positions with which they agree.

U.S. President Joe Biden warned Netanyahu on Wednesday, through an interview given to Thomas Friedman in the New York Times, that passing reform legislation “without the broadest possible consensus” would risk “breaking something… with your relationship with America’s democracy.”

The Knesset’s Constitution, Law and Justice Committee has just finished a 19-hour review of some 27,000 objections to the bill that had been filed by the Opposition after its first reading passed in the Knesset last week. The Opposition claims that the reasonableness clause is a vital need to check the government’s authority since Israel has no Constitution to assure proper checks and balances in the system of government.

The reasonableness standard is one of several benchmarks that judges have in their current arsenal to reject a government decision. None of those other criteria have been touched by the judicial reform legislation.

Committee chair MK Simcha Rothman, one of the architects of the original judicial reform legislation, almost all of which has been officially postponed if not dropped, said he was not informed about any such discussions on moderating the bill.

Changing a bill after it has gone through the committee process for the second time (the first being before the first reading) would be an unusual step that could delay its passage into law. It was expected to be on the Knesset’s order of business for final readings on Monday.

The Knesset will recess for three months at the end of July, meaning that a delay may end the coalition’s chances of showing its supporters that it can pass at least one piece of reform legislation, even if not one of the major parts.

The most important reform would be changing the composition of the Judicial Selection Committee to give government representatives the majority rather than the current method, where by virtue of their number, sitting justices could wield a veto on any proposed judge, giving them the virtual right to select their successors.

A second major plank is the Override Clause, giving the Knesset the right to overturn a Supreme Court decision. Neither proposition is on the table now, and it remains to be seen if the coalition will try to move them forward in the fall session of the Knesset.

There have been massive street protests for over six months, and hundreds of IDF reservists have threatened to refuse call-up to duty if any part of the reform passes.