Posted on 03/27/2016 11:23:09 AM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
Jerusalem (AFP) - Israel's top court on Sunday struck down a landmark deal regulating exploitation of Mediterranean gas reserves, in a major defeat for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who called the ruling "mystifying".
A panel of Supreme Court justices said in their ruling that a clause in the plan that prevented it from being changed for a decade was unacceptable.
"We have decided to cancel the gas deal because of the stability clause" that would have barred future governments from altering the deal, they said.
The court however suspended the ruling for a year to enable the parliament to amend the agreement.
Critics of the deal between the Israeli government and a consortium, including US firm Noble Energy, praised the ruling while Netanyahu said it threatened the development of Israel's gas reserves.
(Excerpt) Read more at yahoo.com ...
I think I know what is going on here.
By comparison, the US congress cannot “bind” future congresses in certain ways. And contracts that bind are often not permissible. So the US congress cannot make a contract that lasts more than their time in office, in many cases.
“Courts have long held that Congress cannot “bind” future Congresses—that is, it can’t force a future session of Congress to carry on its own policies.
“That practice, formally known as “legislative entrenchment,” is seen as privileging one group of lawmakers over another, “binding” future to the priorities set in the present.
“In the 1996 case U.S. v. Winstar Corp., Justice David Souter quoted the British jurist William Blackstone, who said that “the legislature, being in truth the sovereign power, is always of equal, always of absolute authority: it acknowledges no superior upon earth, which the prior legislature must have been, if it’s [sic] ordinances could bind the present parliament.”
“The principle is more complicated in the United States, where the government is bound by the Constitution and any private contracts into which it enters. But as a general rule, any Congress can reverse the decisions of any past Congress.”
And I would hazard to guess, the Israeli constitution also has a clause against “Knesset entrenchment”.
...does not exist... and that is why Israel have no legally binding borders and why they can at will, go into Palestinian territory and take it for themselves. There was never a plan for a two state solution, from 1948 forward, the plan has always been, and always will be, to take back the land from the Euphrates to the Nile.
A panel of Supreme Court justices said in their ruling that a clause in the plan that prevented it from being changed for a decade was unacceptable. "We have decided to cancel the gas deal because of the stability clause" that would have barred future governments from altering the deal, they said. The court however suspended the ruling for a year to enable the parliament to amend the agreement.One thing the US and Israel have in common is, not enough judges are behind bars.
Having an unwritten constitution follows in the footsteps of the UK, who also do not have a written constitution, but instead follow established rules, such as “legislative entrenchment”.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Politics/judreview.html
Benjamin Netanyahu should not have been taken unawares by this, as it is actively being debated in Israel, and is a consideration most lawmaking. So behind the scenes perhaps he was making an executive power grab, only to be thwarted by their supreme court.
The UK has the Magna Carta http://www.bl.uk/magna-carta/articles/magna-carta-english-translation
... and just like the US Constitution, it has been amended over the years, however, it still remains the guiding document for the UK
Israeli bureaucracy is awesome. It is something they have in common with Iran. Lots of fingers in every pie.
The Magna Carta (1215) was just the first document. A better description compared to the US is that it was more like the Declaration of Independence, instead of the US constitution, in that it was not a particularly organizational document, but a protest against and set limitations on the king.
Some refer to the Provisions of Oxford (1258) as the first written constitution, in that it was much more organizational in character.
But in either case, the Bill of Rights (1689), followed by the Act of Settlement (1701), and subsequent acts, were comprehensive as organizational documents, so have had much greater impact.
Things really picked up steam only in the 20th Century.
http://www.bl.uk/magna-carta/articles/britains-unwritten-constitution
Still, the lack of clarity in having a multiple source organization based in competing documents was a big impulse to the US founding fathers to have a single, comprehensive document as both the organizational guide of government, and a Bill of Rights to emphasize the limitations of government. It still took them two tries.
Israel hasn’t been around for very long, so still has much formative work to do.
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