Here is a the latest draft of my paper on Israel’s Paradox of Authority. This is still a work in progress, so please do not use without author’s permission.
Paradox of Authority Yoav Sivan june 2023
To the best of my knowledge, I offer here the most comprehensive account of the origins of the the Israeli system. It is an account that recasts the Israel system — a radical demystification of Israel’s constitutionalism, getting rid with all the metaphysical dead skin that accumulated in years of ignorance and ideology-laden thinking. Among the points of interest I advance:
- Israel’s Proclamation of State (aka Declaration of independence) inaugurated Israel, the Official Gazette, and was officially the state’s Decision #1
- The Official Gazette, including the Proclamation (Decision #1) was promulgated in Arabic as well as in Hebrew
- Israel is the only country without an official constitution. The comparison to the UK, NZ is conceptually misguided
- Israelis, culturally speaking, do not know how to distinguish between “official” and “formal” — denoted by the same word in Hebrew. (It is very similar to having one word for “epistemology” and “ontology”)
- Math analogy. Since February 16, 1949, Israel exists on the Complex Plane. The Post-1949 Reshumot inhabits the imaginary, or unofficial axis, which competes with the Real (official) Axis of the Official Gazette
- Israeli Reshumot laws are not numbered and do not include an enacting clause, a pedestrian practice that exists everywhere. Reshumot is promulgated only in Hebrew, unlike the Official Gazette.
- Israel is the only institution I’m aware of to fail a strict Hart’s Recognition Test. It is my interpretation of Hart’s Rule of Recognition. A naive Recognition Test is about private recognition of personal authority — the child recognizes her mother’s voice. A strict Test concerns recognition beyond the private — the child can distinguish her mother’s voice amid the cacophony on the street
- Israel’s does not have an official procedure to distinguish between a bill and a law! Only Knesset bylaws to that effect define legislature procedure. But Knesset’s bylaws are internal procedures and cannot have constitutional standing. An official legislation procedure would define the status of a Knesset decision. Israel is like a person who wears her shirt inside out
- Israel’s Reshumot (post 1949-decisions) depend on the authority of the Knesset, therefore Israeli law is relatively private and any state act is necessarily aggressive.