The Reasonableness bill gets its name from the legislation in effect stripping the Israeli Supreme Court's ability to declare government decisions unreasonable, which critics say so severely erodes checks and balances that it will lead to a Netanyahu coalition "dictatorship".
As we reviewed earlier, those protesting the reform are largely secular, and according to the New York Times, fear that the legislation will make it easier for the government to enforce ultra-Orthodox Jewish practice in public life and for government leaders to get away with corruption, including Netanyahu, who is currently on trial for bribery and fraud. Netanyahu also spent the weekend in the hospital for an emergency heart procedure which resulted in him receiving a pacemaker. He left the hospital and was present for the vote's passage in Knesset Monday.
An estimated hundreds of thousands of angry demonstrators swarmed the streets in Jerusalem (where Knesset is located) and Tel Aviv.
Within the Knesset, multiple last-minute attempts to amend the bill or to come to a broader procedural compromise with the opposition failed, and two compromise frameworks floated by a union leader and the president were rejected. A series of ideas for unilaterally softening the legislation, discussed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and key coalition leaders even as the Knesset was preparing to vote, also led nowhere.
The vote followed almost 30 hours of continuous floor debate that began on Sunday morning. During that period, hundreds of thousands of protesters took to the streets, both for and against curbing judicial checks on political power.
According to the law’s text, courts are prohibited from exercising any scrutiny over the “reasonableness” of cabinet and minister decisions, including appointments and the choice to not exercise vested authorities.
Other controversial aspects to the judicial overhaul package will give Netanyahu's hard-right coalition much greater power in the appointment of judges, and legal advisers from the judiciary would be ejected from various government ministries, no longer having direct input in legal matters.
The Reasonableness bill gets its name from the legislation in effect stripping the Israeli Supreme Court's ability to declare government decisions unreasonable, which critics say so severely erodes checks and balances that it will lead to a Netanyahu coalition "dictatorship".
As we reviewed earlier, those protesting the reform are largely secular, and according to the New York Times, fear that the legislation will make it easier for the government to enforce ultra-Orthodox Jewish practice in public life and for government leaders to get away with corruption, including Netanyahu, who is currently on trial for bribery and fraud. Netanyahu also spent the weekend in the hospital for an emergency heart procedure which resulted in him receiving a pacemaker. He left the hospital and was present for the vote's passage in Knesset Monday.
An estimated hundreds of thousands of angry demonstrators swarmed the streets in Jerusalem (where Knesset is located) and Tel Aviv.
Within the Knesset, multiple last-minute attempts to amend the bill or to come to a broader procedural compromise with the opposition failed, and two compromise frameworks floated by a union leader and the president were rejected. A series of ideas for unilaterally softening the legislation, discussed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and key coalition leaders even as the Knesset was preparing to vote, also led nowhere.
The vote followed almost 30 hours of continuous floor debate that began on Sunday morning. During that period, hundreds of thousands of protesters took to the streets, both for and against curbing judicial checks on political power.
According to the law’s text, courts are prohibited from exercising any scrutiny over the “reasonableness” of cabinet and minister decisions, including appointments and the choice to not exercise vested authorities.
Other controversial aspects to the judicial overhaul package will give Netanyahu's hard-right coalition much greater power in the appointment of judges, and legal advisers from the judiciary would be ejected from various government ministries, no longer having direct input in legal matters.
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