Law committee votes on reasonableness bill changes after marathon debate

The Constitution, Law and Justice Committee began voting on reservations to the reasonableness standard bill on Tuesday after a marathon 19 hours of debate through Monday night. 

Almost 28,000 reservations to the judicial reform bill had been submitted on Monday, and to address the sheer amount of proposed amendments the panel decided to vote for the submissions in groups of 20.

Voting began in the afternoon at a breakneck pace that angered opposition members who felt that they had difficulty keeping up and understanding what they were voting on.

Negotiations underway

Labor MK Efrat Rayten brought up reports that negotiations were underway to create a compromise on the bill. Law Committee chairman Rothman said that he didn't know about such negotiations, but that they had presented multiple proposals over the course of committee sessions which were principled and reflected facts on the ground.

The only reason to go against something that was true was in service of a "greater peace." Rothman said that the coalition would not give up on what it believed was right if the opposition said itself that it would not accept anything less than what it proposed. 

Rothman said during the debates on the reservations that despite the many hours of speakers and experts on the side of the opposition, and the exhaustive discussion, the opposition had operated in bad faith.

"The opposition proceeded with a complete refusal to agree," said Rothman. "We would be very happy to move forward with the fixing of the judicial system through agreements and cooperation. The opposition says it has a lack of faith in the government and whoever heads it, and against my opinion legislation was stopped the previous round [of reform bills]. The pause period was not used by the opposition in order to reach agreement."

Likud MK Hanoch Milwidsky said that during negotiations there were already broad agreements on limiting reasonableness standard application to the government and ministers. While the committee held hours of debates and a record amount of reservations were submitted, Milwidsky had said that it was unlikely that the text of the bill would be changed. 

Yesh Atid MK Yoav Segalovitz said that the coalition was negligent to ignore the hundreds of thousands of Israeli citizens that were involved in protests, which included many Likud voters. National Unity MK Orit Farkash-Hacohen said that she had never seen as much social disarray as had been created by that piece of legislation. 

Yesh Atid MK Elazar Stern raised again the issue of complementarity, in which international legal forums defer to local courts if they are independent and fair. Stern said that soldiers rely on the requirement for reasonableness among officials to ensure that the orders are legal and that they are not in danger of being brought before international courts. 

Stern accused the coalition of voting along party lines rather than on principle, which was made evident by a lack of proper debate on the issues. He noted that they didn't hear the position of the treasury or the Knesset Speaker. 

The reasonableness standard bill would limit the application of judicial review of government administrative decisions. The standard allows the striking of administrative decisions deemed extremely beyond the scope of what a reasonable and responsible authority would decide.