The Invisible Constitution in Comparative Perspective

The Platonic Conception of the Israeli Constitution 

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Law and Positive Law. Some positive legal systems may be more just and 

therefore closer to Natural Law, and some not, but the two are conceptually 

different, and there is no causal or conceptual necessary connection between 

them. Therefore their relationship is usually portrayed as one of conflict – the 

Natural Law that lead Antigone to bury her brother, in the Greek play that 

carries her name, conflicted with Creon’s positive law that forbade it.

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 The 

relationship of Form and Substance and of Idea and Matter is, on the other 

hand, one of reflection and manifestation. This is the reason why the act of 

bridging the gap between the imperfect constitutional text and the perfect 

Idea of the constitution is usually referred to by judges and lawyers as an act 

of “interpretation” rather than an act of conflict and of “overriding.” The true 

Form is thought to lie somehow in the heart of its imperfect manifestation in 

the constitutional text, and the judge, interpreting the text, only finds it there 

and brings it to light.

Fourth, the Platonic conception can also help explain the extensive use of 

foreign constitutional law in the jurisprudence of the Israeli Supreme Court,

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as well as in the jurisprudence of other constitutional courts that share this 

model, such as the German

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 and the Canadian

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 ones. The same attempt at 

getting at the ideal Form that is embedded somehow in the imperfect text, is 

shared by constitutional judges all over the world, as different constitutions are 

all manifestations (flawed and imperfect each in their own way) of this ideal. 

Since judges all over share the same project they can be aided by the products 

of each other.

Fifth and finally, the Platonic conception can also explain why judges can 

annul constitutional provisions even without a “super” constitutional text that 

lies above the constitution. Judges can invalidate even the constitution itself, if 

it deviates too much from the Platonic Idea of a constitution. This conclusion 

may sound extreme, but it is also part of actual Israeli constitutional doctrine. 

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Sophocles, Antigone (trans. Robert Fagles) (Penguin Classics 2015). It has been pointed out to 

me that this perception of the relationship between Natural Law and Positive Law is true from 

a positivistic perspective, but not necessarily from a Natural Law one. I thank Steve Smith for 

this point.

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See Iddo Porat, “The Use of Foreign Law in Israeli Constitutional Adjudication”, in Gideon 

Sapir, Daphne Barak-Erez and Aharon Barak (eds.), Israeli Constitutional Law in the Making 

(Hart Publishing 2013), 151.

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Hannes  Unberath, “Comparative Law in the German Courts,” in Guy  Canivet,  Mads  

Andenæs and Duncan Fairgrieve (eds.), Comparative Law before the Courts (British Institute 

of International and Comparative Law 2004), 307.

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Peter McCormick, “The Supreme Court of Canada and American Citations 1945–94: A Sta-

tistical Overview” (1997)  8  Supreme Court Law Review  527;  Peter  McCormick, “American  

Citations and the McLachlin Court: An Empirical Study” (2009)  47  Osgoode Hall Law  

Journal 83.

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Iddo Porat

According to Justice Barak and other Justices, the Supreme Court could inval-

idate a Basic Law if it conflicted in a strong way with the “basic principles of 

the system.”

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 This doctrine is associated by these judges with the doctrine 

of “unconstitutional constitutional amendments” known also in other consti-

tutional systems,

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 but it seems more far-reaching, as the unconstitutionality 

in the Israeli case would not emanate from the constitution itself, but from 

higher principles – the Idea of a constitution according to my interpretation.

9.4.  The Platonic Conception taken to the Extreme, 

Justifications, and Answers to Objections