In this week’s episode of Top Story, JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin speaks with legal expert Jerome Marcus about the controversy over plans to reform Israel’s judiciary. The two take a deep dive into the almost unlimited power that the Israeli Supreme Court has seized.

They also talk about the need for legislation that would restore some checks and balances to a system where the justices have given themselves the right to interfere in virtually every aspect of Israeli life on the basis of nothing more than their own idea about what is “reasonable.”

In Marcus’ view the impetus for this judicial power grab is the belief by secular liberal elites that they have the right to impose their supposedly more “enlightened” beliefs on the country’s right-wing and religious majority. “The secular left thinks Israel is illegitimate if they’re not running things,” says Marcus.