Last update - 00:00 26/11/2006
Aharon Barak: Personal attacks 'small price to pay' for reforms
By Yuval Yoaz; Haaretz Correspondent
Retired Supreme Court president Aharon Barak said Friday that personal attacks on him and on the Supreme Court were "a small price to pay for a constitutional revolution."
"We were in the eye of the storm, but that is the price that any Supreme Court must pay, and in my eyes it was a very worthwhile price," Barak said during a speech at a convention of the Israeli Association of Public Law in Caesarea.
Many current Supreme Court justices participated in the convention, among them Supreme Court President Dorit Beinisch, justices Eliezer Rivlin, Edna Arbel, Ester Hayut and Eliyakim Rubenstein, as well as Attorney General Menachem Mazuz and other attorneys, judges, and academics.
"Was there a price for the constitutional revolution? Of course, everything important has a price," Barak said. "But I think that the price the Supreme Court paid was worthwhile."
"What did we pay?" continued Barak. "Attacks on Aharon Barak? That's the price?"
"Criticism of the Supreme Court exists in every democratic country," said Barak. "The price that was paid here is nothing compared to the importance of the past and the future. We want our children to grow up in a society in which people have freedoms, and we can't achieve this without a constitution and without judicial review."
Barak added that in hindsight he wouldn't change any of his rulings, even in cases in which the Supreme Court was harshly criticized.
"As a judge, my head doesn't work like that," he said. "When I issue a ruling, I don't ask myself what the ultra-Orthodox, the National Religious Party, Shas, or Mapai [Labor's predecessor] will think about it."
"What a disaster it would be for our society if judges would think about how everyone was going to react," he said.
"It could be that the rulings about the separation fence in the West Bank and torture were very bad for the Supreme Court, because a large part of the Israeli society felt alienated by them," said Barak. "But what can I do? The Supreme Court isn't my mother's store, it's a government institution. We do what's good for the State of Israel, not what's good for the Supreme Court."
Barak sharply criticized recent proposals to remove the Supreme Court's authority to overrule laws, and to limit the court's power to declare that a certain law violates the Basic Laws, which function as a de facto constitution.
Barak also called for the Knesset to change the law if the court's recent ruling requiring recognition of gay marriages performed abroad is not to its liking.
"If there are parties that don't like our decision to register [gays] as married, then change the law," Barak said. "What do you want from me? You are the legislators, go change the laws."