Although Netanyahu supports revisions to the bill, Justice Minister Levin and Knesset Constitution Committee Chariman Rothman are concerned that such a bill could enshrine the reasonableness clause in law for the first time
Justice Minister Yariv Levin and Simcha Rothman, the chairman of the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, plan to introduce a new, softened version of the government’s proposal to revoke the reasonableness standard.
This clause gives the Supreme Court the power to block government decisions that it finds unreasonable, and has previously been used by the courts to block certain administrative decisions by the government, cabinet ministers and other administrative authorities.
The committee began discussing a more sweeping proposal to revoke the reasonableness standard on Sunday. But, according to coalition sources, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu advocated for Levin and Rothman to reword the proposal and make it less far-reaching. Levin and Rothman have yet to determine how significantly the law should be weakened, and what these revisions should entail.
The new draft of the bill may be ready before the Constitution, Law and Justice Committee is set to vote on it, but this is uncertain, and the coalition may prefer to pass the original, broader bill instead.
Levin and Rothman intend to make the new draft similar to a plan proposed by Chief Justice Noam Solberg, who has suggested that the reasonableness standard should not be applied to all elected officials, only to civil servants within the framework of administrative law. This would mean that ministerial decisions would be outside the purview of the standard, as would be all cabinet appointments.
At the same time, Levin and Rothman fear that passing any bill about the reasonableness standard, even in a limited form, will formally establish its legality. The standard was never legislated, but received its status through court rulings, and has its roots in British law.
In January, Israel’s High Court of Justice disqualified Shas party chairman Arye Dery from serving as health and interior minister, on the basis that his appointment was “unreasonable in the extreme,” as he has been convicted three times of criminal offenses and failed in his previous public positions to “serve the public loyally and lawfully.”
The coalition is determined to limit the reasonableness standard’s application to ministerial appointments, which would allow the prime minister to reappoint Dery.