The Supreme Court of Israel recently invalidated a controversial law limiting judicial "reasonableness" review of government policies. I previously wrote about the law here. To analyze the decision, we are pleased to publish a guest post by prominent Israeli legal scholar Professor Ronit Levine-Schnur. She is a faculty member at the Law Faculty, and co-head of the Center for Applied Research of Risks to Democracy, at Tel Aviv University. We are grateful to Prof. Levine-Schnur for taking the time to share her insights on this important ruling, especially during this difficult period in Israel's history.
The remainder of this post is by Prof. Levine-Schnur, not me (Ilya Somin):
In the course of one year, Israel—an intense country on a regular basis—has been pushed to its foundational limits. As a Jewish and democratic state, Israel's internal and external conflicts have always been extensive. But 2023 was a year beyond the worst expectations. The October 7 sudden and repulsive attack, massacre, and kidnapping of civilians by Hamas, were horrific which targeted Israel as a Jewish state, and Israelis as Jewish (although not all the victims were). It brought back living memories of the Holocaust. One of many stories to mention is of that Dr. Hayim Katsman, who was shot dead while hiding in a closet at his home in Kibbutz Holit, exactly 80 years after his ancestors in Poland were deported and killed at the Treblinka extermination camp. Unfortunately, the horrendous events of October 7 (and its aftermath) came after 9 demanding months of a wholly different kind of attack on Israel's democracy.
