Arutz Sheva reported last week:



Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday reiterated his opposition to a proposal by MKs Zeev Elkin and Yariv Levin (Likud) that would candidates for Israel's High Court of Justice be vetted by a Knesset committee, similar to the US Senate review of Supreme Court Justices.

T"here will be no hearing for judges before politicians," Netanyahu said of the controversial bill. "The court's independence is above all."

Netanyahu directed Justice Minister Yaakov Neeman, and coalition chairman Ze’ev Elkin (Likud) to remove the draft proposal from the agenda.
 
Other media reported that the Prime Minister said in private conversations on Tuesday that the draft law is against the country’s status quo and not in keeping with the coalition’s guidelines.


OK, so Bibi thinks the bill is against the status quo. Huh? Isn’t every Bill against the status quo? What kind of an argument is this?
 
But Bibi went further,
    “The independence of the judiciary is above everything. I view as paramount the separation of powers and the rule of law.”
This really riles me. While Bibi is stressing the separation of powers, the US stresses “checks and balances”.

Nobody there has unfettered power. Nor should they. Yet that is inherent in Bibi’s notion that the Court should have “independence”. But this is a limited concept.

It should be independent in the sense that it should suffer no interference in its decision making process.

But it is not independent in the sense that it must follow the law of the land. That law restrains it.

Unfortunately the Court itself violates such law when it usurps the legislative process for itself. This Court is notorious for creating law rather than enforcing law as it was written. If for some reason the law is not clear or violates other law, then the Court should correct the matter by sending the law back to the Knesset. For Bibi to suggest that the Court should have the right to do this is outrageous.

But all that has nothing to do with the appointment of judges. In the US all proposed judges for the Supreme Court must be vetted and approved by the Senate. How does that differ from the proposed law that Bibi has squelched?

    Channel 2 reported that Netanyahu’s position on the matter was heavily influenced by Attorney-General Yehuda Weinstein, who met Netanyahu and his advisers on Monday and said that the law went too far. According to the report, Weinstein said the proposal was a “bad law” that upset the balance of power between governmental branches, politicized the judicial system and would harm the public’s confidence in the judiciary.
This is just too much. The Bill is intended to “upset the balance of power” as the Left carries too much weight and isn’t representative of society at large. This legislation would redress, not upset, the balance of power. Furthermore, the judicial system is “politicized” and must be more representative of the values of society rather than of the left only.
 
In the U.S. it is common practice for conservatives and liberals to appoint conservative or liberal judges respectively. Overtime, the Court alternates between dominance by conservative judges and liberal judges. How much more balance can one get.
 
But the worst is to allow the Judiciary to perpetuate itself by appointing only like-minded judges.