MK Miki Zohar
MK Miki ZoharFlash 90

The Ministerial Committee on Legislation will discuss and vote this coming Sunday on a bill which would restrict the right of radical leftist organizations to petition the Supreme Court on the legality of Jewish homes in Judea and Samaria.

The bill, submitted by MK Miki Zohar (Likud), effectively states that a petition to the Supreme Court may only be brought by an organization or individual likely to suffer personal damage or injury as a result of the matter about which they are petitioning the court.

"In recent years, we have witnessed a growing erosion of the 'right of standing',a legal term which limits the ability to appeal to the court solely to someone who is injured or is related to the issue of the petition," the bill's explanatory notes read.

"The result is the proliferation of petitions filed by organizations and individuals on political, political and economic issues, although the petitioner himself has no connection to the matter at hand and [the matter] does not cause him injury for which he is seeking redress."

Th initiators of the bill say that "these petitions are intended to lead to judicial intervention in matters that are not normally dealt with in the realm of the courts, thereby circumventing the authority of the elected echelon and the decisions of the voters."

In the USA, a party cannot challengte a law unless he has "standing," that is, the ability to demonstrate to the court sufficient connection to and harm from the law or action challenged to support that party's participation in the case. In Israel, the rules of "standing" were liberalized by former Chief Justice Aharon Barak, who believed in an activist court and advocated wide open rules on standing so that anyone seeking a judicial decision on an issue that involved a substantive violation of the rule of law, or in a matter which the court deemed to be in the "public interest," merited standing. This opened the door to a plethora of leftist NGO suits against homes in Judea and Samaria although no one had claimed ownership of the land.