Hope for More Good Things to Come

Elation over the proposed Israeli judicial reforms, which I discussed last week, goes far beyond my general support for the reforms. For me, those reforms constitute a symbol of hope for all who toil in the intellectual vineyards that bad ideas, even deeply entrenched ones, can be defeated by better ideas and the cumulative efforts of many over long years.

As I look back over the past 25 years, I’m struck by how many individuals contributed to the critique of the High Court’s overweening power. My own input, though voluminous, was modest in impact and usually derivative of the work of others more familiar with the Hebrew materials. (Well, actually, the former publisher of the Jerusalem Post did tell me once that I had succeeded in irritating then Court president Aharon Barak.)

In 2001, I had lunch with Judge Robert Bork in a Washington D.C. kosher restaurant to discuss his chapter on Israel in a book on judicial overreach around the world, Coercing Justice. I was able to point him to a trio of superb articles in Azure in the late ’90s by Hillel Neuer of UN Watch on Barak’s judicial philosophy, by Evelyn Gordon on the judicial manipulation of the position of attorney general, and Mordechai Haller on Israel’s unique system of selection for the High Court.

Along with Neuer, Gordon, and Haller, another hero in the saga is Ari Shavit. His interviews in Ha’aretz around the turn of the millennium with Professor Ruth Gavison and former Court president Moshe Landau brought home to the country’s elites that the criticisms of Barak’s constitutional revolution were not the products of a campaign of know-nothings, but reflected a thoughtful and powerful critique. Sadly, neither Gavison nor Landau lived to see that critique gain the traction that it has today.