NGO: Barring High Court from overruling AG decisions 'tragedy' - Haaretz

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Sun., November 25, 2007 Kislev 15, 5768

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		Justice Minister Daniel Friedmann. (Tomer Appelbaum / BauBau)

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Last update - 14:14 25/11/2007

NGO: Barring High Court from overruling AG decisions 'tragedy'

By Yuval Yoaz, Haaretz Correspondent

Tags: Israel, High Court of Justice

The Movement for Quality Government on Sunday harshly criticized Justice Minister Daniel Friedmann's proposed legislation which will bar the High Court of Justice from overruling decisions of the Attorney General in criminal issues, such as indictments and plea bargains.

The movement said that taking up Friedmann's proposal would be "a tragedy for generations to come."

The proposal, which was reported in Haaretz Sunday morning, was sparked by the court's current deliberations on petitions against the plea bargain signed with former president Moshe Katsav. Friedmann believes the court should have refused to hear these petitions.

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Friedmann's office confirmed he has held discussions on this issue, but said no decision has been made: "The issue of justiciability is being considered and examined in internal discussions, but not all decisions have been made."

Though the court rarely intervenes in an attorney general's decisions, it has done so occasionally. For instance, it overturned then-attorney general Yosef Harish's decision not to indict the bankers whose share manipulations caused the 1983 bank share collapse.

Friedmann is also considering legislation to bar the court from ruling on security or budgetary matters. Saturday, however, he said he does not intend to make all security issues nonjusticiable.

"No one is even considering the idea that all security issues should be nonjusticiable," he told a Netanya College conference at Neveh Ilan. "But the idea that during a military operation, people should run to the court and ask it to halt [the operation] because they claim the commander isn't attacking properly is a bit excessive."

Friedmann also told the conference that the public's loss of faith in the court stems not from his public spats with the justices, as critics have charged, but "from the fact that the court is dealing with issues it shouldn't be dealing with, and at the same time has trouble granting relief to litigants, on issues that the citizen encounters in his daily life. When you examine the loss of faith in the courts, you see a falling graph for the last seven years - and I was not in my job for six of those."

He also attacked the public lobbying by current and former Supreme Court justices on issues of public controversy, saying this violates the judicial code of ethics.

Regarding proposals to establish a constitutional court whose justices would be chosen by politicians, Friedmann said this was not "crazy."

"When the court decided it had the authority to overturn Knesset legislation, the question naturally arose as to who the justices deciding such matters ought to be," he explained. "There was an idea in the Knesset of establishing a constitutional court with different justices, and that's not a crazy thing; that's the norm in most countries."

Nevertheless, he said, he opposes a constitutional court, believing it would be better to solve the problem by changing the composition of the Judicial Appointments Committee.

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