Supreme Court President Isaac Amit warns that criticism of the judiciary threatens public trust in the rule of law (see Jerusalem Post article “Supreme Court president: Fake news, incitement against judges threaten rule of law” published on June 1).
Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara repeatedly presents herself as a guardian of democratic norms against allegedly dangerous elected officials.
Yet neither Justice Amit nor Baharav-Miara seems willing to confront a far more uncomfortable possibility: that the growing public anger directed at Israel’s legal establishment is not primarily the result of “fake news,” incitement, or public ignorance.
It is the predictable consequence of decades of judicial and bureaucratic overreach.
Amit’s speech in Eilat reflects a mindset that has become increasingly common among Israel’s legal elite.
Whenever confidence in the judiciary declines, an explanation is sought everywhere except within the judiciary itself. If millions of Israelis have lost faith in the courts, it must be because they have been misled.
If criticism intensifies, it must be because democracy is under attack by radical forces of destabilization. If citizens question judicial overreach, they are portrayed as dangerous threats to the rule of law rather than participants in democratic debate.
This narrative is both unfortunately convenient and profoundly self-serving.
No serious person defends threats against judges. No democratic society can tolerate harassment or intimidation of public officials. But criticism of judges is not incitement.
Questioning judicial decisions is not an assault on democracy. Challenging the power of unelected legal actors is not an attack on the rule of law. In fact, such criticism is often the very essence of democratic accountability.
The deeper problem is that Israel’s judiciary increasingly behaves as though opposition to its expanding authority is intrinsically illegitimate by definition. Rather than asking why public trust is eroding, it forcefully demands that the public restore trust while leaving the underlying causes unaddressed.
The public sees a court that repeatedly intervenes in political controversies that would traditionally be resolved through elections and legislation. It sees legal doctrines stretched beyond recognition to justify intervention in matters that were once considered outside judicial purview.
The roots of judicial expansion
It sees an attorney-general who increasingly functions not merely as the government’s legal adviser but as a politically slanted veto holder capable of obstructing policies supported by elected officials.
Most importantly, it sees a system that exercises enormous power while remaining perennially insulated from democratic accountability. That perception did not emerge from a social media campaign. It emerged from lived political experience.
The intellectual roots of this crisis reach back to the judicial revolution championed by Aharon Barak.
The doctrine that “everything is justiciable” transformed the judiciary from an institution charged with interpreting law into one increasingly tempted to supervise public life.
Onve every political question becomes a legal question, judges inevitably become political actors, whether they admit it or not. The consequences are visible everywhere.
Government ministers find their discretion constrained. Coalition agreements become judicial battlegrounds. Administrative decisions become opportunities for legal intervention.
Increasingly, the boundaries of elected authority are defined not by voters or legislators but by lawyers, judges, and bureaucrats.
This is not the normal operation of democratic checks and balances.
It is the gradual transfer of power from accountable institutions to unaccountable ones, from the hands of the electorate to the whims of a supraordinate judicial caste that increasingly treats democratic choice as a force to be managed rather than a mandate to be respected.
Baharav-Miara’s campaign against National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir exemplified the problem. Whether one supports Ben-Gvir or opposes him is irrelevant.
The critical question is who gets to decide whether a minister remains in office and what powers he may exercise.
In a democracy, those decisions ultimately belong to elected leaders accountable to voters, not to legal officials who face no electorate and no democratic sanction.
The Attorney-General’s Office increasingly acts as though it possesses an independent governing mandate. The court increasingly acts as though it possesses supervisory authority over the political system itself.
Neither institution was designed for such a role.
Amit warns that falsehoods can erode democracy. He is correct. But democracy is also endangered when unelected institutions accumulate and even give the appearance of inventing powers without clear legal bases or corresponding accountability.
It is endangered when legal officials begin to regard themselves not as servants of democratic government but as its guardians against the people themselves.
The growing crisis of confidence in Israel’s judiciary was not created by its critics. It was created by a legal establishment that repeatedly confused independence with supremacy and oversight with governance.
Courts derive their authority not from elections but from legitimacy. That legitimacy depends on public confidence that judges are applying law rather than exercising political preference through legal language and judicial “revolutions.”
Every intervention into inherently political questions spends a portion of that legitimacy. Every expansion of judicial authority beyond its traditional boundaries depletes the reserve further.
Amit is right about one thing: Israel faces a serious challenge regarding public trust in its institutions. But the solution is not to lecture citizens about their skepticism. The solution is for the judiciary to rediscover the virtue of restraint.
Israel needs an independent judiciary. It needs judges who are protected from intimidation and political pressure. It needs courts strong enough to uphold the law.
What it does not need is a judiciary that increasingly behaves as though it stands above democratic choice itself.
The crisis confronting the court today is not merely a crisis of public rhetoric. It is a crisis of legitimacy. And legitimacy, unlike authority, cannot be commanded. It must be earned.
The writer is an American-Israeli marriage therapist, trainer of therapists, lecturer, author, and volunteer in the IDF reserves, as a MDA medic, in ZAKA, and in the Israel Police Search and Rescue Team.