The Courts and the Legislative Supremacy of the Knesset

Abstract

Israel, unlike most modern States, does not have a Constitution embodied in a formal document which lays down the basic political assumptions on which the system of government is founded, and which is considered the “supreme law of the land”. The student of Israel's Constitution must, as in the case of the British Constitution, collate his country's Constitution, including its unarticulated “major premises”, from a close study of the practical workings of the system of government and from a number of diverse sources of varying legal force.From a study of the workings of the system of government, Knesset (Parliament) legislation and the decisions of the courts, it would appear that Israel's courts, lawyers and others have asserted, almost without demur, the doctrine of the legislative supremacy of the Knesset as the underlying unarticulated major premise of Israel's Constitution. In accepting that assumption they seem to have chosen to follow the constitutional trail blazed by their British forerunners. This article is intended to test that assumption and to establish its exact application in the legal system.