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The Lawfare Podcast: The Judicial Revolution Is Here

Benjamin Wittes, Amichai Cohen, Yuval Shany, Natan Sachs, Jen Patja
Wednesday, July 26, 2023, 8:00 AM
What is the substance of the first phase of Israel's judicial overhaul and what is coming next?

Published by The Lawfare Institute
in Cooperation With
Brookings

The first phase of Israel's judicial overhaul is now law. Huge numbers of people are in the streets, reservists are resigning, the stock market is tanking, and Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes assembled an all-star panel to talk about it.

Natan Sachs is the Director of the Center for Middle East Policy and a Senior Fellow in the Foreign Policy Program at the Brookings Institution. Amichai Cohen teaches international law and national security law at the Ono Academic College in Israel. And Yuval Shany is the Hersch Lauterpacht Chair in International Law and former Dean of the Law Faculty of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Cohen and Shany are the authors of a string of in-depth articles about the Israeli judicial revolution and the protests they have engendered (see their Lawfare articles hereherehereherehere, and here). The four of them talked about what the substance of this new law is, what's coming next, whether this is the end of the reform sequence or just the first slice of salami, and about the incredible reaction we have seen from Israeli civil society and from opposition parties.


Benjamin Wittes is editor in chief of Lawfare and a Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution. He is the author of several books.
Amichai Cohen teaches international law and national security law at the Ono Academic College, Israel, where he previously served as the dean of the Faculty of Law. He is also a senior fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute. Cohen received his LL.B. degree from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and his LL.M. and J.S.D. degrees from Yale Law School.
Professor Yuval Shany is the Hersch Lauterpacht Chair in International Law and former Dean of the Law Faculty of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He also currently serves as Senior Research Fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute , and was a member of the UN Human Rights Committee between 2013-2020. Prof. Shany received his LL.B. cum laude from the Hebrew University, LL.M. from New York University and Ph.D. in international law from the University of London.
Natan Sachs is a fellow in the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. His work focuses on Israeli foreign policy, domestic politics, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and U.S.-Israeli relations. He is currently writing a book on Israeli grand strategy and its domestic origins.
Jen Patja is the editor and producer of the Lawfare Podcast and Rational Security. She currently serves as the Co-Executive Director of Virginia Civics, a nonprofit organization that empowers the next generation of leaders in Virginia by promoting constitutional literacy, critical thinking, and civic engagement. She is the former Deputy Director of the Robert H. Smith Center for the Constitution at James Madison's Montpelier and has been a freelance editor for over 20 years.

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