Why Israel's High Court is considered left-wing

Menachem Mautner
Haaretz
26 October '10

The Kadima faction, through MK Ronnie Bar-On, petitioned the High Court of Justice against the legislation of a two-year budget. The president, Justice Dorit Beinisch, referred the petition to an expanded nine-justice panel. With all due respect, the president erred. She should have rejected the petition out of hand.

When a Knesset member petitions the High Court of Justice, a distinction should be made between two situations.


If he claims that a personal right of his has been violated (by the Knesset speaker or the attorney general, for example ) he should be able to petition like anyone else. But when an MK wants the court to rule on a political matter, the court should reject the petition.

Political matters should be debated in the Knesset, the media and academia, not in the High Court of Justice. MK Bar-On should have presented his argument to the public for debate, not to the court.

I found that 250 MKs petitioned the High Court between 1979 and 2005. The most petitions were submitted by Yossi Sarid, Ran Cohen, Avraham Poraz, Mohammad Barakeh, Amnon Rubinstein, Haim Oron, Ofir Pines-Paz and Zahava Gal-On. The "petition champion," Sarid, openly described his actions in an August 2004 article in Haaretz, aptly titled "We foisted everything on the High Court of Justice."

MKs from right-wing parties also petitioned the court, but far less frequently. What's more, I found that while the left-wing MKs almost always raised political arguments in their petitions, the right-wing MKs usually claimed personal harm to a Knesset member.

(Read full story)

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