Yes, they were.

In any case, the gist of it is this.

I completely agree that there need to be checks and balances on all the branches of government.

And one of the checks and balances that you have on the executive and the legislature or that you have judicial review by the courts.

That's perfectly fine.

The point is, however, that in democratic countries, you have to have checks and balances on the judiciary as well, right? Otherwise, the judiciary could just decide on every single issue, whatever it wants.

I mean, how do you prevent that from happening? And the answer is that in every democracy you have limits on the kind of cases the court can hear.

Right,

can't

defend the law.

I cannot defend what the government wants to do over here.

I just can't.

I mean, in fact, the exact opposite is true.

This is a slam dunk case.

So what happens? The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court is on a panel of three, and he rules against rules against the government.

No,

can't

defend the law.

I cannot defend what the government wants to do over here.

I just can't.

I mean, in fact, the exact opposite is true.

This is a slam dunk case.

So what happens? The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court is on a panel of three, and he rules against rules against the government.

No,

Could you maybe tell me a little bit about sophistication as a mathematical concept?

Yes.

That's a paper that I wrote probably 40 years ago, which dates me, nothing else.

But the idea is this.

You want to measure the complexity of a string.

So let's talk about binary strings, zeros and ones.

Imagine you have a string that goes 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1.

I guess maybe could you explain what you see overall as the value of tradition and traditional societies?

To cut a very long story short, Koppel's ideas were floated here and there by various ministers and members of Knesset, and he and his colleagues continued to focus not on politics, but on the nitty-gritty of policy.

We were a little bit nerdy in our approach, and we kind of thought that the real problem was the laws.

Yeah, okay, the laws aren't right.

You know, w- we gotta change the law.

If only the law said that the attorney general doesn't have this kind of power.

If only the law said that the committee that appoints the justices should have a different composition, right? If only the law said, on what basis can the courtrule a government decision to be illegal, right? If only we got the right words there in the text, then we'd solve the problem, right? And what we discovered during the battles of judicial reform was that we actually misdiagnosed the problem completely.

Basically, he said most of the people who are the most vocal about opposing the reform openly admitted to not really knowing or caring what was actually in it.

I was sitting with all these people who seemed especially outraged and said, "Let me understand what's going on." And the first question I would always ask them is"Could you specify exactly which aspect of this reform it is that bothers you? Is it the attorney general? Is it appoint- you know, judicial appointments? Is, is it the authority of the ...