Involuntary Academic Contributions to Illiberal Populist Causes: Israeli Legal Scholars and the Supreme Court

Academia is usually considered liberal leaning, but recent research finds that members of the academic field sometimes take part in delegitimation of the liberal social order. This can occur with the willing involvement of populist intellectuals, as evidenced by Swartz’s study on “academic Trumpists”. But academic involvement in illiberal populism can also be involuntary, such as the case of liberal Israeli legal scholars whose theories were used to delegitimize the Israeli Supreme Court and promote a judicial overhaul. This study uses Bourdieu’s theory of fields, which defines a field as an abstract “space”, with an independent inner logic structuring its laws, its hierarchy, and the forms of capital that are useful within it. Through this lens, it explores the use of academic theories, created in the academic field but used in the political field, to delegitimize the Israeli Supreme Court. The analysis centers on claims made against the Supreme Court in Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper by actors belonging to the political field who took a key part in attempts to dismantle court authority: Ayelet Shaked (justice minister in 2015-2019), Simcha Rotman (member of parliament and one of the leaders of the judicial overhaul), and Yariv Levin (justice minister since 2023). It also examines publications by the Kohelet Policy Forum, a right-wing think tank that is known to influence these politicians. This analysis finds that the names and theories of three academic actors were used to criticize the Supreme Court: Menachem Mautner, Yoav Dotan, and Daniel Friedmann. All three expressed dissatisfaction with the judicial overhaul promoted by Israel’s right-wing government since 2023, but their ideas were used by the political figures who brought it about. Furthermore, each of these legal scholars had different intentions when criticizing the Supreme Court: Mautner studied the Israeli legal system with a declared liberal agenda and viewed the court as a liberalizing agent, but feared that the court made mistakes in the way that it promoted liberalism which would prevent it from continuing to do so. Dotan described his work as criticizing the court from a friendly position, and published his ideas on the subject with no connection to a political agenda. Friedmann forayed into the political field alongside his academic work and tried to slightly limit the Supreme Court’s political involvement while serving as justice minister under a liberal centrist government in 2007-2009. Despite these different intentions and actions, the academic writing of all three was used to justify an illiberal populist political program of which they disapproved. This was done by translating academic ideas in a way that distorts them. These findings show the weakness of the academic field in its relationship with the political one. Ideas, once out in the open, can be used opportunistically by political actors, regardless of the intentions of their creators. Furthermore, within the political field and in the public discourse that it influences, few people have the necessary knowledge to understand the original content and context of these critical theories, meaning that they can be easily manipulated or misused.