כיצד השפיעה המהפכה החוקתית על האמון בבית המשפט

Israel’s constitutional revolution took place about 25 years ago. Before and during the revolution, two different theories were raised about its impact on public confidence in Israel’s courts. Moshe Landau argued that the revolution would undermine public confidence in the courts. Aharon Barak argued that the revolution would not harm public confidence in the courts. To date, these theories have not been empirically tested. Three challenges arise when empirically testing these two competing theories. First, a credible database is required that includes data on public confidence in the courts before and after the constitutional revolution. Second, when analyzing trends in public confidence in the courts it is important to control for confidence in state institutions in general, because changes in confidence in courts may reflect more general trends in public confidence in institutions. Third, the analysis must control for global trends in confidence in the courts, because changes in confidence in Israeli courts may reflect global trends. In this article, we use a unique database that has not been utilized by researchers to date. This database includes data on public confidence in courts and in other institutions, both in Israel and in other countries, from 1991–2018. Using this database, we show for the first time that Israel’s constitutional revolution was associated with a dramatic decline in public confidence in the courts. Controlling for general trends in confidence in institutions in Israel, and for general trends in confidence in courts in other countries, the proportion of Israeli residents with high confidence in the courts decreased by about 30 percent following Israel’s constitutional revolution (about two standard deviations in global comparison). No court system in the world and no institution in Israel saw such a dramatic decline in public confidence during that period. The findings of the article are consistent with Landau’s theory, and contradict Barak’s theory. We use the data to rule out alternative explanations for the decline in confidence in the courts, such as demographic changes, populism, the impact of social media, or the onset of commercial television broadcasting in Israel, and present additional qualitative evidence for Landau’s theory. Finally, we discuss the implications of the decline in confidence in the courts on the method of judicial appointments, disobedience, and the political question doctrine.