Die israelische Justizreform im Kontext der Verfassungsentwicklungen im Nahen Osten

Constitutions are particularly contested in times of political change. The Middle East and North Africa offers numerous examples with the Arab uprisings unfolding since 2010. This contribution begins by demonstrating the importance of constitutions regardless of the regime type and illustrates how constitutions are contested in autocratic orders and how they are instrumentalized for various purposes. Using the example of the Israeli democracy and its struggle for a constitution, we show on the one hand how the lack of a constitution leads to legitimation problems of the de facto constitutional bodies. On the other hand, we stress how the struggle for the judicial reform in Israel can be embedded in different processes of state-building, constitutional development and political upheaval in the Middle East.