An expanded panel of 11 Supreme Court justices convened on Thursday to hear petitions against the appointment of ultra-Orthodox Shas party leader Aryeh Deri as a top minister in the Netanyahu government. Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara had opposed the appointment, arguing that it “exceeds in the extreme the boundaries of reasonableness” due to Deri’s two criminal convictions, the second one just a year ago.

The Supreme Court session took place less than 24 hours after newly appointed Justice Minister Yariv Levin presented an overhaul of Israel’s legal system.

The changes Levin intends to push through in a flash legislative blitz include restricting the court’s authority to strike down laws and government decisions, and an “override clause” enabling a simple majority of 61 Knesset members (out of 120) to relegislate these laws. Also on the agenda is handing politicians a decisive say in the appointment of judges (without parliamentary oversight), making legal advisers of government ministries answerable to the ministers themselves rather than the attorney general, and curbing the courts’ “reasonableness” argument in judging legislation and government decisions.

Levin unveiled on Wednesday what he described as the first phase of the plan. The second expected phase, at Netanyahu’s behest, would be to split the attorney general’s role in two — one for the government’s legal adviser, the other for the state prosecutor. This would allow Netanyahu to replace Baharav-Miara with a prosecutor of his choice who could either revise or revoke the corruption indictments against him.