When Hamas attacked Israel on October 7 2023, it brought to a sudden and calamitous end a national crisis that had threatened to split the country. Ever since Yariv Levin, the Minister of Justice, had introduced his plan for Judicial Reform in January 2023 (after Benjamin Netanyahu had explicitly said—in his campaign a few months earlier—that such reform was not on the agenda), Israel had been bitterly split. Enormous protests rocked the country week after week. Reservists threatened not to serve. There was serious talk about the possibility of civil war.
The horrors of October 7 ended all of that—but not forever. With Israeli politics now heating up in anticipation of October’s elections, and with the possibility that war with Iran (and perhaps even Hezbollah) may be ending, judicial reform is certain to return to the headlines.
In 2023, those who did not read Hebrew did not have access to any thorough examinations of the issue. Now, thankfully, that has changed. A new book by Yonatan Green, Rogue Justice: The Rise of Judicial Supremacy in Israel, affords English readers an opportunity to get to the heart of what rocked the Jewish state in 2023 — and that may soon do so again.
As we hear in today’s conversation with Yonatan Green, he has a very clear take on why judicial reform was and remains necessary. Whether or not one agrees with him, though, his book affords us all an opportunity to become deeply informed observers of this critical issue.
As one review noted:
In easily comprehensible form, Israeli-American attorney Yonatan Green has produced a closely reasoned work on one of the most divisive domestic issues facing contemporary Israel: the appropriate balance of power between the Knesset and the Supreme Court.​
Green believes that for some 40 years, power in the State of Israel has been deliberately, consistently, and illegally usurped by the judiciary.
In his detailed, rigorous, meticulous, and insightful work, Rogue Justice: The Rise of Judicial Supremacy in Israel, he scrutinizes how the Supreme Court has misled itself into unbalancing the proper relationship between the judiciary and the government.
In today’s conversation, Yonatan Green discusses his book and introduces us to some of the key elements of his argument.
Yonatan Green is an Israeli-American attorney, most recently a Fellow with the Georgetown University Center for the Constitution in Washington, D.C. Born and raised in Israel to parents from the United States and the United Kingdom, Yonatan obtained a degree in Law and Communications from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem before qualifying to practice law in Israel and in the State of New York. He has worked in private practice, at major tech firm Mobileye, and was co-founder and Executive Director of the Jerusalem-based Israel Law & Liberty Forum, inspired by the Federalist Society. His work in English and Hebrew has been published in a variety of academic, popular and media platforms, and has been cited by the Israeli Supreme Court.
The link at the top of this posting will take free subscribers to a brief excerpted portion of today’s conversation.
For paid subscribers, the link at the top will take you to the full conversation; below, paid subscribers will also find a transcript for those who prefer to read, as always.