Old boys’ club

Regarding “Israel’s Supreme Court needs democratic checks” by David M. Weinberg (January 27): The Netanyahu coalition’s proposed “judicial reform” legislation is not an unprovoked attack upon the Israeli judiciary, but comes after years of abuses by the Israeli court system. Such excesses were practically guaranteed to occur on account of a judicial selection process for Supreme Court justices which lacks transparency and is in fact dominated by the court itself, together with a court that has no effective accountability to anyone beyond its own membership.

Though the judicial selection processes in the United States are by no means perfect, they at least have checks and balances to hold the judiciary accountable. In filling vacancies on the US Supreme Court, the president of the United States actively makes the nomination, which must be confirmed by the Senate; this gives the executive and the legislative branches of the American government more meaningful input into the process than exists in the Israeli system.

Many state and local judgeships in the US are elective positions. Though politics often sullies the quality of those who sit on the various lower court benches, the process at least instills some measure of external accountability to the courts.

Given that the US Supreme Court justices have included men such as the unabashedly antisemitic James McReynolds, or Harlan Fiske Stone, who excluded women from Columbia Law School when he had served as the dean of that institution, it is fair to speculate whether a Jew such as Benjamin Cardozo could have ascended to the bench of that court in 1932.

Similarly, it is doubtful whether a Horace Stern could have become the first Jewish justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in 1936, let alone elevated to the chief justice’s chair in 1952, if, instead of election by the populace, an “old boys’ club” of Pennsylvania Supreme Court jurists were solely in control over appointments to that tribunal.

The proposal by Amotz Asa-El (“Who wants civil war?” January 27) to enable a two-thirds super majority of the Knesset to override the Israeli Supreme Court would impose upon the court an accountability now sorely lacking.

Full disclosure: (1) Prior to making aliyah, I was admitted (and today continue as such) to practice before the United States Supreme Court; and (2) I recently authored a piece of punditry regarding a 1924 instance when the US Congress overrode the US Supreme Court.

KALMAN H. RYESKY Petah Tikva

First of all, I wish a full recovery to the injured in the terror attacks on Shabbat.

Secondly, when attacks on the government’s proposals for reform of the Supreme Court are coming at us from all directions, an article like the one written by David M. Weinberg is a breath of fresh air.

It is a short, yet comprehensive review of the Supreme Court’s activities and decisions since the 1980s when the justices started to take on wider jurisdiction. Of course not all judgments can be listed, yet the ones cited show the bias that pervades the court, and the contradictory decisions which have been made.

I thank Mr. Weinberg for his most informative article, and I wish this article would be disseminated further, perhaps translated into Hebrew and published in Maariv and Israel Hayom. Haaretz would never publish it, as per Ruthie Blum’s article on Gadi Taub (“Canceling Gadi Taub in the name of ‘democracy,’” January 27).

BATYA BERLINGER