Yuval Shany and Amichai Cohen on the Israeli Supreme Court's Bombshell
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 11 January 2024
⏱️ 57 minutes
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Summary
The Israeli Supreme Court—in the middle of the war in Gaza—handed down a decision that amounts to a kind of death blow to Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu's judicial reform project.
Before October 7, judicial overhaul was all that anybody was talking about in Israeli politics—you know, a five-part legislative plan to assert parliamentary control over the judiciary and reduce Israel's checks and balances into a more majoritarian system. Only one part of it passed, and the Supreme Court has now struck it down in a decision that sharply divided the court on some questions and reflected significant unity on others.
To discuss the 700-page ruling, we brought back our Israeli judicial overhaul team: Yuval Shany of Hebrew University and Amichai Cohen of Ono Academic College. Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes spoke with them about what the court did and what the court didn't do, about their doing it in the middle of a war and whether that was truly necessary, and about where the judicial politics of Israel go from here.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The following podcast contains advertising. |
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| 0:30.0 | We all know that the judicial overhaul, although it was promoted by a small sector, |
| 0:41.0 | reflected a wider disagreement regarding many issues. |
| 0:47.0 | I'm Benjamin Wittis and this is the Law Fair Podcast January 11th, 2024. |
| 0:54.1 | The Israeli Supreme Court in the middle of the war in Gaza |
| 0:58.8 | handed down a decision that amounts to a kind of death blow to Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu's judicial reform |
| 1:08.0 | project. |
| 1:09.0 | Oh, you remember the judicial overhaul before October 7th. |
| 1:13.4 | It was all that anybody was talking about in Israeli politics. |
| 1:17.9 | And we covered it a lot here. |
| 1:19.7 | You know, a five-part legislative plan to assert parliamentary control over the judiciary and reduce Israel's checks |
| 1:29.8 | and balances into a more majoritarian system. |
| 1:34.8 | Only one part of it got passed, |
| 1:36.8 | and the Supreme Court has now struck it down |
| 1:40.8 | in a decision that sharply divided the court on some questions and reflected significant |
| 1:47.7 | unity on others. |
| 1:50.3 | To discuss the 700 page ruling, we brought back our Israeli judicial overhaul team |
| 2:00.0 | Yuval Cheney of Hebrew University and Amihai Cohen of Ono Academic College. |
| 2:07.2 | They have written more thoughtful stuff in English on law fair on this stuff than just about everyone else combined |
... |
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