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ParaBrutus t1_jb25o4q wrote

While Netanyahu is certainly unpopular on Reddit, he just won election in Israel three months ago and these judicial reforms were not a surprise. The military defections/protests are more a symptom of extreme partisan animosity in Israel than a failure of democracy.

Frankly, the reforms Netanyahu is advocating for are pro-majoritarian by allowing the Knesset to override Israel’s supreme court’s rulings by simple majority vote. What benefits Netanyahu now could just as easily be used by more liberal governments to undo these laws with a simple majority after future elections. The ability of legislatures to override court rulings in Europe is the norm and is relatively uncontroversial—the British high court cannot override parliament, and the French code is the supreme law of the land—the courts merely enforce the code as it is written by the legislature.

What Netanyahu is advocating for is not so different from liberal democrats in the US advocating for congress to pack SCOTUS with a simple majority vote—the reason democrats don’t like the current SCOTUS is because its constitutional rulings cannot easily be “overruled” by congress without amending the constitution itself, but the composition of the court can be controlled with simple majority votes for new appointees.

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