The Israeli Law Professors’ Forum for Democracy, an ad hoc, apolitical, and voluntary group of experts on Israeli law and specifically Israeli public law, expresses its grave concern over the apparent intention to abolish the independence of the judiciary, to subordinate it to the government and to the partisan political considerations of the executive branch, and to undermine the independent status of the attorney general legal advisers to the government and to governmental ministries. Following Position Paper No. 9 on the Knesset’s authority to amend basic laws, this Position Paper examines the restrictions on approving amendments to Basic Laws and focuses on the question of when such changes go into effect under law.
The conclusion of this Position Paper is that the proposals for amending Basic Law:The Judiciary constitute an abuse of power, in light of the clear conflict of interest for the majority coalition. Therefore, even without addressing the question of whether the proposed changes harm the core values of the State of Israel—and in our opinion they do—at a minimum, the proposed changes should only go into effect beginning with the next Knesset.
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