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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Polit. Sci.
Sec. Peace and Democracy
Volume 7 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpos.2025.1533270
This article is part of the Research Topic The Crises of the Israeli Democracy View all articles

The Agenda Premises of the Judicialization of Politics: Policy Attention in Israel's High Court of Justice

Provisionally accepted
Maoz Rosenthal Maoz Rosenthal 1*Assaf Meydani Assaf Meydani 2
  • 1 Hadassah Academic College, Jerusalem, Israel
  • 2 Academic College Tel Aviv-Yaffo, Yaffo, Tel Aviv, Israel

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    This study examines the supposed "activism" of Israel's High Court of Justice amid recent political crises and legislative efforts to curb its powers. While judicial behavior often balances political activism and constitutional problem-solving, this paper analyzes the Court's agenda structure to assess its approach. The research hypothesizes that an activist court would maintain an agenda focused on a few core topics over time. In contrast, a court that takes a legal, constitutional approach would have an agenda with a broad array of topics and policy punctuations. Analyzing the Court's rulings from 1995 to 2018, this study reveals an agenda structure mostly aligning with the latter expectation. By examining the dynamics of policy attention, this paper contributes to our understanding of judicial review strategies beyond traditional preference and incentive-based models. The findings suggest that Israel's High Court of Justice usually operates more as a legal problem solver than an activist institution, offering new insights into its role in Israeli politics and policymaking.

    Keywords: Judicialization of Politics, Judicial activism, Policy attention, Policy punctuations, Israel's High Court of Justice

    Received: 23 Nov 2024; Accepted: 14 Jan 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Rosenthal and Meydani. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Maoz Rosenthal, Hadassah Academic College, Jerusalem, Israel

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