As protesters continue to pour into the streets throughout Israel, condemning a bill passed on Monday by the Right-wing government to blunt the power of the country’s judiciary, the Israeli Supreme Court faces a momentous decision: How should it respond to a challenge to its own power?

The new law limits the rationale the court can use to strike down decisions by the government. Yet as soon as it passed, petitions asked the justices to do just that, by voiding the law itself.

Analysts said the court has three choices: 1) strike down the law; 2) narrowly interpret it to curb its impact; or 3) simply not decide by refusing to hear any of the petitions.

The bill was passed by the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, as part of a broad plan by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to overhaul the judiciary by taking control of how judges are selected and eliminating the power of the courts to review certain cases.

The protesters say the bill, and the broader plan, are an attack on democracy because the courts are the primary check on the Knesset and the prime minister in Israel’s parliamentary system. Netanyahu and his allies defend the law as a protection of democracy, a necessary means of preventing judges from interfering with the decisions of elected lawmakers.

New York Times News Service