Israel’s Controversial Judicial Reform Bill

Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu passed Controversial Judicial Reform Bill to limit the Supreme Courts’ ability to overturn decisions made by the government ministers.

What’s in News?

Israel has recently passed Controversial Judicial Reform Bill to limit the Supreme Court’s ability to overturn the decisions made by the government ministers. The new measure was passed by 64-0 votes as the opposition lawmakers stormed out of the chamber and refrained from voting.

New Measure that has been passed

This new measure of the Israel Government also called as ‘reasonableness bill’ according to which the Supreme Court cannot overrule the National Government using the legal standard of ‘reasonableness’.

• Reasonableness: It is a legal standard which is used by many judicial systems including Australia, Britain and Canada. A decision is said to be unreasonable if a court rules that it was made without considering all relevant factors or without giving relevant weight to each factor or by giving irrelevant factors too much weight.

Government’s rationale

PM Benjamin Netanyahu and his supporters stated that this bill was passed to rebalance powers between the branches of the government.

PM stated that the Supreme Court has become an insular, elitist group that does not represent the Israeli people. It has overstepped its role, getting into issues it should not rule on.

Criticism

As Israel’s Opposition lawmakers don’t have enough numbers in the Parliament to stop the reforms, non-parliamentary organizations have taken to the streets. Protestors blocked a main thoroughfare in Jerusalem, where Israel’s Parliament is located, as protest leaders called on opponents of the legislation to come out into the streets wherever they were.

Military reservists, technology leaders, academicians, senior doctors and trade union leaders, who had joined forces this year to compel Netanyahu to suspend the reforms for a few months, are threatening to go on strikes.

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