Israel’s constitutional chaos is far from over

Bythe 1989 city of Jerusalem had been trying for nearly two decades to build a new . Powerful religious groups who saw matches on the Sabbath as a desecration of Jerusalem’s sanctity had blocked the project, but at last ground could be broken. One obstacle remained. The acting interior minister, Arye Deri, an up-and-coming ultra-Orthodox politician, blocked the land-use change. Teddy Kollek, the city’s mayor, took him to court. In January 1989 the Supreme Court ruled that Mr Deri had acted “in an unreasonable way”. Two and a half years later the first match was played at Teddy Stadium.Legal experts cite the case as one of the earliest examples of the court’s nullifying a government decision on the grounds of “reasonableness”. That principle was introduced in a ruling in 1980 by Aharon Barak, then a new judge on the Supreme Court. It revolutionised Israeli jurisprudence and is a principal source of the constitutional chaos engulfing Israel today.