However, the court must not replace its discretion with the discretion of the municipality. He must not determine what is the appropriate test for enacting the prohibition of the sale of pigs on the entire city. I will discuss this later. As part of my criticism of the municipality's decision, I would emphasize more about the identity of the audited party.
To illustrate the importance of this consideration, I would compare a court's decision to intervene in a police officer's decision to arrest a suspect or a court's decision to impose a temporary foreclosure in a civil lawsuit, and a court's decision to intervene in a municipality's determination to enact a sweeping prohibition on the sale of pork. Even if a court is authorized to be a guiding hand in both types of cases, it is clear that its hand will be closer to cases of foreclosure or arrest than to a case of a municipality decision. Hence, the scales will be less inclined to interfere with the judgment of the decision-making body in a case like this case. The breadth of interpretation in the spirit of the provisions of the Basic Laws will be narrower. This approach stemsnot from the lack of practical wisdom in confronting the government – which can never be the decisive consideration – but rather from the diminishment of the justification for doing so in an inappropriate case. A distinction must be made between an authority that was given to a court in the first place and an authority that was given to another body in the first place, when this body is not supposed to be guided as a matter of routine by the court. I would say that, with the exception of the exceptional case, restraint in such a case is not only wise but also just.
This consideration has weight for our matter. However, in order to determine its extent, it is appropriate to analyze the nature of the decision and the manner in which it is decided by the decision-making body – the Ashkelon Municipality. As we shall see, things are interconnected.