Israel's 2023 judicial reform debate concerned who sets the limits on government power. Israel has no single, completed written constitution. Instead, the Knesset has enacted Basic Laws over time, and the Supreme Court has interpreted their status and the limits they place on ordinary legislation. The government proposals would have changed how courts review government action, how judges are selected, and how legal advisers guide ministers.
How Basic Laws became constitutional law
Israel has no single, completed written constitution. The Knesset has instead enacted constitutional chapters as Basic Laws over time. In 1992, the Knesset enacted Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty and a Basic Law protecting the right to pursue a profession. In United Mizrahi Bank v. Migdal Cooperative Village (1995), the Supreme Court considered whether Basic Laws had superior status and whether the Knesset could limit its own legislative authority. The judgment established the basis for reviewing ordinary laws against the protected rights in those Basic Laws.
This development did not produce a complete constitution or settle every question about the Knesset's authority. Basic Law: The Judiciary, one of these constitutional chapters, sets out the courts' independence and appointment framework in its Knesset text. That unfinished structure meant that proposals to amend a Basic Law raised a special question: whether a temporary parliamentary majority could alter the rules that constrain government.
What the 2023 package proposed
Justice Minister Yariv Levin announced a package in January 2023. Its principal proposals included changing the Judicial Selection Committee, restricting courts' use of reasonableness review, creating an override mechanism for some laws, and changing the status of government legal advisers. These were separate proposals with different legislative histories; only the reasonableness amendment became law in 2023. For the appointment dispute, see how the proposed Judicial Selection Committee would change. For the law that did pass, see what the reasonableness amendment said.
Why the design question mattered
Supporters said elected officials needed greater control over decisions that shaped public policy and that judges had gained excessive influence. Opponents answered that Israel's parliamentary system gives a governing coalition control of both the executive and a Knesset majority, so an independent court and professional legal advice supply checks when the same coalition controls both. The disagreement was therefore about the institutional rules themselves: whether political accountability through elections was sufficient, or whether judicial review and independent appointments were also necessary constraints.
The Supreme Court's January 2024 ruling sharpened that dispute. Twelve of 15 justices held that the Court could review Basic Laws in exceptional cases; eight justices held that the reasonableness amendment crossed that boundary. The Court's reasons and vote are set out in the January 2024 decisions.