Where now for Israel’s constitution in light of recent political developments?
Join the Hebrew University’s Professor Yuval Shany in conversation with Crossbench Peer in the House of Lords, Lord Pannick KC, as they discuss the general direction in which Israeli constitutional law is headed towards. What extent should observers of these developments inside and outside Israel be concerned with its long-term democratic well-being?
Like the UK, Israel does not have a formal constitution. Instead it has a series of basic laws protecting some human rights and delineating the powers of the different branches of government, which the Israeli Supreme Court has regarded as having constitutional like status.
This latter determination, and the associated power of Israeli courts to exercise judicial review over Knesset legislation, are however coming under increasing political attack. Politicians, mainly from the right, allege that Israel’s “constitutional revolution” is nothing but a power grab by liberal judges.
And it is against this background, that the new government in Israel is reportedly keen on passing legal reforms that would limit the power of judicial review, change the system of judicial appointments and partly immune serving politicians from criminal proceedings or mitigate their repercussions.
Professor Yuval Shany is the Hersch Lauterpacht Chair in International Law and former Dean of the Law Faculty of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He was a member of the UN Human Rights Committee from 2013 to 2020 and served for one year during that time as Chair of the Committee. He serves, at present, as a senior research fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute, and as the head of the CyberLaw program of the Hebrew University CyberSecurity Research Center. He is also serving this year as the co-director of the Center for Transnational Legal Studies at King’s College, London.
Lord Pannick KC is a practising barrister at Blackstone Chambers, a Crossbench Peer in the House of Lords and a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. He specialises in constitutional and administrative law and in appellate advocacy. He has argued over 25 cases in the Supreme Court, and argued 100 cases in its predecessor, the Appellate Committee of the House of Lords. His most celebrated case was for Gina Miller in 2019, establishing in the Supreme Court that Prime Minister Boris Johnson had acted unlawfully in advising The Queen to prorogue (suspend) Parliament during the Brexit crisis. David is the Chairman of the British Legal Friends of the Hebrew University
In partnership with the British Friends of Hebrew University.
