This is the Libertarian Podcast from the Hoover Institution.

I'm your host Tom Church and I'm joined by the Libertarian Professor Richard Epstein.

Richard is the Peter and Kirsten Bedford Senior Fellow here at the Hoover Institution. He's also the

Lawrence A Tish Professor of Law at NYU and a senior lecturer at the University of

Chicago. Now Richard today I thought we'd go outside the United States to focus on the controversial judicial

overhaul plan in Israel championed by their Prime Minister BB Net and Yahoo.

One petition signed by dozens of eminent economists here in the United States

said that the reforms would, and I'll quote, weaken the independence of their judiciary and its power

to constrain governmental actions. Now supporters say, well actually Richard, that's where you come in as you did write an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal this year with Max Raskin, at least in part defending the proposed reform.

So can you give me some background on the fight that's going on here and what your position is?

Yes, well, I mean, I think the answer to the question

is, will this weaken the power of the judiciary?

Answer to that question is surely yes.

But the harder question is that a justification for that kind of a move was there no

justification for that move and in order to understand that what you have to do is to

know what the current position is and one of the great tragedies when you see the economist letter in the lawyers letter in every is what they do is they simply

the great tragedies when you see the economist letter and the lawyer's letter and everybody else's letter

is what they do is they simply announce

that this is a threat to democratic institution

but they never explain why it is

when you try to increase the power of the executive and the Knesset, which is the democratic part of the system, the prime minister, why it is that that is a threat to democracy. So the situation started in

1953. Israel's a new country. It does have a Supreme Court with 15 members.

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