Sunset Legislation in Israel during the COVID-19 Pandemic

This article presents an empirical and normative study of the widespread use of “sunset legislation”, also known as temporary legislation, as a tool for dealing with COVID-19 in Israel. First, the article presents the sunset legislation’s dramatic increase in Israel and traces the purposes and rationales that led legislators to use it. Second, the article evaluates sunset legislation vis-à-vis emergency regulations as the major alternatives for adopting temporary and urgent legal measures. It further addresses the difficulties and failures that have arisen or may arise from the widespread use of sunset legislation in times of crisis like COVID-19. Lastly, while recognizing that sunset legislation is ‘the lesser evil’ in times of crisis, a number of normative proposals are presented, so to improve sunset legislation during COVID-19 and to overcome the difficulties in using it.