The Transformation of Legal Advisors into Political Appointees

Disregard of the Attorney General’s authority to interpret the law by several government ministers is leading Israel toward a constitutional crisis.

The Israeli democracy regulates the operation of the judiciary through the constraints of formal rules that check the political actors, the individual judges, and the judiciary. Yet beyond these formal rules, informal institutions and practices are sometimes equally important in the operation of the judiciary, as they are in any constitutional system. This article discusses informal institutions that are important in the operation and independence of the Israeli judiciary.

Transforming legal advisors into political appointees will thwart the dual purpose of their role- helping the ministry implement its policy, while maintaining the rule of law.

The question of how much power the government should wield was one that generations of halakhic decisors (poskim) worked to curtail.

Downgrading the independence of government legal advisers is not among the highest-profile proposals to reform the Israeli legal system being advanced by Israel’s new right-wing government, but weakening the status of government legal advisers is actually an important and troubling part of the government’s package of proposed reforms.

Turning ministry legal advisors into political appointees will deprive them of their ability to protect the rule of law and will reduce public trust in the ministries.

IDI Researcher Attorney Eli Bahar discusses the central role that members of Israel's system of legal counsel play in formulating the rules of what is permissible during warfare in real time, during the fighting, in order to ensure that Israel's citizens will not be ashamed of themselves after the fighting ceases.