Judicial Review in a Defective Democracy

Abstract

Governments reform the process of nominating judges to constitutional courts, seeking to reduce the courts’ involvement in state affairs. Since 2008, reformers have tried to appoint judges who would be more judicially restrained. We examine the rulings of judges on Israel’s Supreme Court in its capacity as Israel’s High Court of Justice on the Israeli executive’s decisions. We show that reformers did achieve their goal of reducing High Court of Justice judges’ decisions supporting petitions against the executive. However, that trend has abated due to existing legal conventions regarding particular policy subsystems.