The Invisible Constitution in Comparative Perspective

Legal Discourse (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 107. In describing German 

constitutional jurisprudence, starting from the 1950s, Bomhoff writes that according to juris-

prudence “[t]he written Constitution, on the system-of-values view, might be incomplete and 

the catalogue of rights haphazard, but . . . the value order behind the Constitution could still 

be comprehensive.”

62 

German constitutional jurisprudence is characterized by a high level of formalism and sys-

tematization, features that are absent and even antithetical to Israeli constitutional adjudi-

cation. The German version of the Platonic conception of the constitution therefore holds 

within it the tension that is often attributed to German law – between highly abstract and 

idealized jurisprudence, and highly formalized and technical one: see Jacco Bomhoff, “Lüth’s 

50th Anniversary: Some Comparative Observations on the German Foundations of Judicial 

Balancing” (2008) 9 German Law Journal 121, 124. That different systems may have different 

versions of the Platonic conception, however, does not mean that they do not share a similar 

conception. I have suggested elsewhere though that the absence of the text as a limitation on 

judicial discretion is balanced in Germany by the formalism that characterizes it, but that such 

balance is absent in the Israeli jurisprudence: see Iddo Porat, “Sixty Years of Balancing: On the 

Transformation from Instrumental to Substantive Balancing in Israeli Law” (2010) 10 Law and 

Business 347 (Hebrew).

63 

See notes 32–35 and accompanying text.

---

290 

Iddo Porat

the structure of the text and to the political compromise behind it, is therefore 

justified since this political compromise is only behind the human and flawed 

“subjective rights” and does not affect the validity of the “objective rights” that 

are derived directly from general principles of personhood and dignity.

The Platonic conception helps explain several key aspects of the relation-

ship to the text in Israeli constitutionalism, as well as in other constitutional 

systems that share this model. First this conception helps explain how the 

Court completely ignores the original intent behind the Basic Laws, and why 

originalism as a constitutional theory has absolutely no place in Israeli con-

stitutionalism. According to a Platonic conception of the text the will of the 

drafters is irrelevant. The will of the drafters of the text cannot affect the truth 

of the Idea of the right or of the constitution, of which the text is an imperfect 

manifestation. Hence, for Barak, the obvious and undisputed will of the draft-

ers of the Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty not to include certain rights 

in the text was inconsequential for its interpretation.

64

 Equality, freedom of 

speech, and freedom of religion “truly” inhere in the right to human dignity, 

and in the more general Idea of a constitution, whether the drafters of the 

Basic Law willed this or not.

Second, this account also explains why Barak chose the right to human 

dignity to carry on its shoulders the weight of the entire bill of rights. This is 

the same right that serves as the Archimedean point for Weinrib, is the center 

of German constitutionalism, and can be seen as the true Form of all the 

different manifestations of the specific rights. Third, the Platonic conception 

can explain why Barak and others view their doctrines as “interpretation” of 

the text, although not being constrained by the human will behind it. This 

point can be made clear if we compare the Platonic conception with the idea 

of Natural Law.

There is much similarity between the Platonic conception of constitutional 

law and constitutional rights, and the idea of Natural Law and Natural Rights. 

There is also of course a historic connection between the two, as the Catholic 

Natural Law theory is a derivation of Greek Platonic and Aristotelian philoso-

phy. Like the Platonic Ideas, Natural Law is unchanging, pure, and unaffected 

by human imperfection. Like the Ideas Natural Law is the “real” thing, and 

holds priority over the human and imperfect Positive Law.

65

 However, there 

seems to be the following difference: unlike the relationship between Form 

and Substance there is no necessary connection or similarity between Natural 

64 

See notes 37–41 and accompanying text.

65 

See Natural Law Tradition in Ethics, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 

https://plato 

.stanford.edu/entries/natural-law-ethics/

.

---