Bill to weaken Israel Bar Association passes preliminary Knesset vote

The bill would give the Justice Minister the authority to set the amount of the annual membership fee instead of IBA's national council.

By ELIAV BREUER NOVEMBER 13, 2024 15:38

A voting station for the head of the Israeli Bar Association, at the Magistrate's Court in Jerusalem, June 20, 2023 (photo credit: YONATAN SINDEL/FLASH90)

Israel's governing coalition passed a preliminary vote on a controversial bill aimed at weakening the Israel Bar Association (IBA) on Wednesday.

The bill, authored by Likud MK Hanoch Milwidsky (Likud), gives the Justice Minister the authority to set the amount of the annual membership fee instead of IBA's national council, which currently enjoys that authority.

Milwidsky and Justice Minister MK Yariv Levin (Likud) argued that the IBA should not have the power to set a fee that lawyers were forced to pay to practice their profession. According to the law's explanatory section, the law also solves the problem of the "lack of transparency of a body whose budget is approximately NIS 100 million."

However, a number of opposition MKs argued that the bill's real purpose was to serve a threat against the IBA, in order to attempt to force the IBA's two members in the Judicial Selection Committee to support Levin's candidate for an upcoming vote to appoint the next High Court Chief Justice. MK Orit-Farkash Hacohen said on the Knesset dais that the head of the IBA had told her explicitly that he had received messages that if its representatives caved to Levin's demands, the threatening law would "go away."

The bill proposal was a watered-down version of a bill proposed by Milwidsky in June that would have made the IBA completely voluntary and instead given a government-appointed committee the power to determine who could or could not practice law. Similar bill proposals came up during the government's controversial judicial reforms in 2023.

Israeli Knesset member, Hanoch Milwidsky, 13 December 2022. Uploaded on 31/5/2024 (credit: Wikimedia Commons)

Judicial Selection Committee

The makeup of the Judicial Selection Committee has been a major bone of contention between the government, the opposition, and the judicial system, and one of the central bills in the judicial reforms was to alter its makeup such that the government could have indirect control over judicial appointments. Another bone of contention is the mechanism for appointing the Chief Justice.

Traditionally, the position is filled by the longest-serving member of the bench, who is currently the liberal interim chief justice Yitzchak Amit. Levin, however, prefers the conservative judge Yosef Elron and has argued that the "seniority" method is not statutory and should not always apply.

Levin has refrained from convening the committee to appoint the next permanent chief justice or to fill the three current vacancies on the bench. The High Court ruled in September that Levin did not have the authority to avoid electing a chief justice and ordered him to do so. The committee meeting is scheduled for November 28.