The suggestion that somehow Israel is facing a crisis of its democracy because of its new government’s preparedness to reform the Supreme Court strikes us as reflecting the same kind of error Americans make when they say that the U.S. Supreme Court  ran off the rails in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. In both instances power is being wrested from the judiciary and returned to the people. That is not a bad thing but a good thing.

Despite that similarity, there is a big difference between Israel’s and America’s democracies, and that is called the Constitution. Israel doesn’t have one, and America does. Neither checked nor balanced by a national parchment, it is all the easier for the Supreme Court of Israel to accrete excessive powers, and all the more important for the Knesset, or Parliament, to assert itself. Prime Minister Netanyahu’s government appears to be doing just that.

No doubt many Israelis are unhappy. Some 80,000 of them took to Tel Aviv’s Habima Square to protest the plan, including the éminences of the left that Israeli voters so soundly rejected in the last election. Palestinian flags reportedly fluttered here and there, as well. Referencing the weather, one speaker intoned “always remember that we prefer the cold and the rain of liberal democracy than the heat and hell of a fascist dictatorship.”

The Supreme Court’s president, Esther Hayut, complains that the reforms would  “deal a mortal blow to the independence of the judiciary and silence it.” A former president of the court, Aharon Barak, calls the proposal a “chain that will strangle Israeli democracy.” The changes he fears include nixing the high court’s ability to override legislation, granting lawmakers greater say in the appointment of judges, and cutting legal civil servant positions.

There are those who insist that this is all about Mr. Netanyahu. He is on trial for corruption, making his stake in a judiciary he can bend towards his interests not just philosophical, but also personal. A clash between the high court and a lawmaker in his coalition, Aryeh Deryeh, over suitability to serve could augur trouble  for Mr. Netanyahu. Israel’s democracy is vibrant but young; its norms are still being established.   

Two years ago we carried Caroline Glick’s warning of the danger of Israel’s “legal fraternity” dictating  “all aspects of public life” and devouring “the powers of the Knesset and the government.” She warned of the use of  “judicial and bureaucratic fiat” to render legislators as “at best, advisors.” Her call to undo the “judicial revolution” led by Judge Barak, who reigned from 1995 to 2006, now appears prophetic.

That paradigm shift, effected in a decision entitled United Mizrahi Bank v. Migdal Cooperative Village, created the power of judicial review by authorizing the Supreme Court to set aside legislation inconsistent with the country’s Basic Laws, which are themselves enacted by the Knesset and serve as a kind of nickel-plated constitution. During Mr. Barak’s decades on the bench, the requirement of standing — a curb on judicial power — was abolished.    

Legal sage Richard Posner argues that Mr. Barak “created out of whole cloth a degree of judicial power undreamed of even by our most aggressive Supreme Court justices.” Mr. Posner calls Mr. Barak an “enlightened despot,” a far cry from Chief Justice Roberts, who likened the role of judges to that of umpires who “don’t make the rules, they apply them.” The plan to reform the judiciary unfolds against this context.