New and old challenges to the legitimacy of constitutional adjudication

di Tania Groppi

The so called “overhaul” of the judiciary in Israel, proposed in January 2023 by the Netanyahu cabinet, raises several issues that go far beyond the Israeli unique geopolitical situation and constitutional system.
On one hand, current developments in Israel can be framed within the recent global tendency of many populistic regimes to capture or make oversight bodies toothless. The essence of populism lies in its anti-
pluralistic nature: populists pretend to speak on behalf of the “true” people. They present the people as a single entity, which only populists may represent, whereas political opponents are described as enemies. The
limits set by constitutional democracy to protect pluralism are considered incompatible with this vision of “democracy”: populists’ claims against “juristocracy” stress the necessity to give the voice back to the “people”, i.e., to the “real people”, i.e., to the populists themselves, by limiting the so called “activism” of legal elites (i.e., courts).

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