A small scoop for those few who care about such matters:
Chief Justice Aharon Barak recently came to the Knesset's Law Committee and advocated enshrining even greater court powers in the proposed constitution. His opening argument was that he has no personal stake in this since he is 68 and mandatory retirement age is 70. The scoop is that he has sent a few trusted friends to discretely speak to a few major makhers to try to get the mandatory retirement age raised. The only good thing one can say about this is that, as things now stand, his replacement will probably be Dorit Beinish, so perhaps we should be wishing him arichus yamim veshanim in the job. (Unbeknownst to most people, Beinish's succession to the throne is not actually mandated by law, only by tradition. YK is working mightily on this front.)
posted by Ben at 1:58 PM
4 Comments:
...sigh...
Barak is the living embodiment of evil in this world. I'm not the type to throw around the term "eiruv rav", but he really makes me wonder. Thankfully, the entire world recognizes that there is something distinctly wrong with our High Court: take a look at Bork's latest book, on judicial activism. He dedicates an entire chapter to Israel.
You exaggerate. Barak is a very brilliant and very decent person. He is also a menace to democracy.
Of course I exaggerated, though not by much. You claim that he is brilliant. So what? Brilliancy is only great, G-d given potential which can be used for good or bad. You say he is decent and that may be true. But I never meant to judge his personal life, only the rulings of his "Court."
It is certainly true that he is a menace to democracy. But that's not nearly the biggest problem - he would be a menace whether his policies were liberal or conservative. The bigger issue is that he has a blatantly anti-religious bias. Jonathan Rosenblum's web site has some great examples of this. No single person has done more to destroy the religious character of the State of Israel than Barak.
About the best that you could say about Barak is that he is a "tinok she'nishbah," though I am not aware of his history.
R Brand
Jonathan is a good friend and we work together on this.
You should know that Barak, despite taking the court down a very anti-democratic and anti-religious path, does have some understanding of what a Jewish State is. (I hope to post some interesting things he's written on this.) The midgets who will take over the court when he's gone are a far cry worse than he is.
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