Judges Rule Leftist Judges May Accept Bribes From Ideological Allies

All seven justices present for the ruling agreed on its substance.

Jerusalem, July 16 – A new High Court decision Thursday rendered the acceptance of financial or other inducements legal for judiciary appointees, provided those offering the inducements come from the same political camp as the recipient.

In a unanimous ruling, the Court determined that the law against bribery only applies when the recipient might act or decide differently had he or she not received the money, favors, or other benefit, and not when the benefit appears not to affect the outcome. Scholars contend this ruling has far-reaching application for numerous issues at the core of Israel’s democratic development.

All seven justices present for the ruling agreed on its substance, with Chief Justice Esther Hayut authoring the decision. She specified that under current circumstances there exists no credible concern that the majority-liberal Court will apply inappropriate considerations, since liberal judges know better how to administer democracy than do Israel’s elected officials. However, she wrote, the principle does not give carte blanche to all judges to accept bribes from those who share ideology.

“We must stress that if, in some hypothetical future that the Court would rather not contemplate, a majority of its members hail from the other side of the political and ideological spectrum, this principle will fall away,” she explained. “Only from one side, meaning the correct side, can bribes get redefined as part of the proper reward for deciding correctly. Without that clarifying inducement, justices might face improper temptation to favor the conservative, which is to say wrong, side in a case. It goes without saying that any decision favoring conservative sensibilities and the preservation of Israel as a secure, sovereign homeland for the Jewish People, as opposed to the glorious pan-national, non-specific entity we envision, automatically raises questions of outside considerations and possible illegal inducements.”

In a separate concurring decision, Justice Menachem Mazuz added that Israeli democracy can only survive when the knowledgeable elite exercises its veto power over ignorant hoi polloi. “It must be emphasized that the will of the people, as the Court understands it, has a strictly delimited role in democracy,” he wrote. “Allowing ‘the people’ to impose their will through majority rule implies that the minority may not do the same. Restricting the minority – i.e. the minority that possesses a monopoly on proper thinking, proper interpretation of legal texts, and proper invention of legal sources from whole cloth – means allowing the wrong people and the wrong opinions to gain sway, which would spell the end for Israeli democracy as we know it.”

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