About 120 professors signed a petition in favor of reforming the judicial system, against which tens of thousands of Israelis demonstrated in the streets in recent weeks. Liat Ron and Aryeh Maliniak spoke today (Thursday) on 103FM with one of the prominent signatories of the petition, the winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics Prof. Israel Oman, who responded to the statements.
“What happened is that there is a lot of noise. The reform is essential. The court went far beyond the limits of reason, when it took control of value issues, ideological issues, among them, some kind of policy of its own as if it were a legislator. Prof. Barak at the time told me that a court is really a legislator. He compared the court to the sages 2,000 years ago who wrote the Talmud, and they were both judges and legislators. That’s right, yes. But what to do? With us, a court is not a sage and we don’t have a theocracy here,” claimed the professor.
He later said, “A legislator is the Knesset and only the Knesset, and the court became the legislator in fact, so the current situation arrived, it took over the country. It’s a dictatorship of the court. Something needs to be done. We hear a lot of noise on the other side against the reform, so we thought we should say something in favor of the reform. The other side can continue to demonstrate, the Knesset’s side will continue to legislate, and I think that the other side should come to the Knesset’s committees and debate and offer compromises and say what they do hear, this is an essential step. The other side can oppose and propose other things. I am not in favor of the whole plan of Levin and Rothman”.
“I don’t see the overcoming paragraph,” Oman continued. “I think that there should be checks and balances of all the government authorities on each other. It is legitimate that a court can invalidate laws, but it should not be like it is today – where in a panel of three judges, two against one can invalidate laws. It should be serious. The composition should be full and there should be a qualified majority, let’s say 12 out of the 15 or 13 out of the 15 should agree or even unanimously perhaps. Disqualification of laws is something very heavy, very serious. But on the other hand, there should be checks and balances from the Knesset on the authority the judge”.
He also said that “it cannot be that the judiciary is a dictator. Since the previous revolution in the judicial system brought about by Aharon Barak, since then the court has been a dictator, in fact. We have a dictatorship. We should not be afraid of a dictatorship, we have a dictatorship today and there should be checks and balances, for example we should It should be possible for new judges to be appointed by a committee and committee members to be appointed by the Knesset.”
According to him, “These very procedures – there is no harmful effect on the economy. What can harm the economy are the statements of the economists. During the Great Depression in the 1930s, President Roosevelt came out and said, ‘We have nothing to fear. All we have to fear is fear.’ When the economists came out with their statement here, then really people all over the world said, ‘The Israeli economy is going to collapse,’ but that’s because of the economists’ statement. The economy is something very, very sensitive.”
In conclusion, he said that “the statement of the economists has meaning. It drives away the entrepreneurs and all those who want to invest. This is what is happening. There is no way that it will have any economic impact. I state this as an economist and as a winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics. I think that the economists who signed They were really wrong about this letter, because they promoted their political views, which actually they can hold their political views, but they brought it into their profession and there is no justification for it.”
Assisted in editing the article: Amitai Doak, 103FM