In Loraine Hansberry’s Raisin in the Sun (1959), Walter famously declaims his understanding of how things work:  “It’s all divided up.  Life is.  Between the takers and the ‘tooken.’” (p. 117)  There is a power imbalance in the world.  Some of us are powerful and can do and take whatever we want; and some of us are powerless to avoid being exploited by the powerful.  And so, Walter concludes, categories like right and wrong are not relevant; only power matters.  Raisin in the Sun was a huge hit in the 1960s; but Walter’s words feel even more relevant today, as we look around and see how people who have amassed huge amounts of money are able to do whatever they want, buying media and elections and so bending democracies to their will and often overwhelming the gates and their keepers designed to prevent just such imbalances.  But money isn’t everything: there is also the more complicated power imbalance of majoritarian rule.  For example: the voters elected Donald Trump; therefore, he can do whatever he wants; the voters elected the Knesset’s members; therefore, the majority of them can do whatever they want.  In either case, the minority has no standing, because the majority has absolute power.  And if that’s not what the US constitution imagined – or Israel’s founders – they were naïve.  For example, the drama surrounding Israel’s recent budget vote left a........

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