Justice Minister Declares War on High Court over Judicial Appointments Committee

Photo Credit: Chaim Goldberg/Flash90

Justice Minister Yariv Levin at a swearing in ceremony for newly appointed judges, June 23, 2024.

Justice Minister Yariv Levin officially announced on Saturday night that he would advance at least one of the key items in his judicial reform: changing the committee’s composition to select judges.

According to Article 4 of Basic Law: The Judiciary, the committee is composed of nine members distributed as follows:

• The Justice Minister who chairs the committee, and another minister who is chosen by the government.
• Two MKs elected by the Knesset.
• Two members of the Bar Association elected in a secret ballot by the National Council of the Bar.
• The President of the Supreme Court.
• Two additional Supreme Court judges, chosen according to seniority.

Appointing a Supreme Court justice requires the support of seven members of the committee. This means that the court judges and members of the bar have an automatic veto right as things stand today. That is why Justice Minister Levin has been reluctant to assemble the committee to decide the replacement of retired Court President Esther Hayut last year.

It should be noted that at least two recent justice ministers – Haim Ramon and Tzipi Livni – did not assemble the committee for a year during their reign, even though the number of serving supreme court justices had dwindled to 10 (from 15). But the current supreme court has ordered the justice minister to assemble the committee within the coming month and vote to elect a new court president – a vote that could only result in picking Deputy President Yitzhak Amit, a leftist who has led the anti-Netanyahu justices for the past year.

Supreme Court Judge Yitzhak Amit, February 8, 2018. / Yonatan Sindel/Flash90

The most crucial point about appointing the next supreme court president is that, by law, he or she would appoint the chair of a state committee to examine the failures of October 7, 2023, and Amit is most likely to appoint fierce enemies of the coalition government, such as retired justice Hayut.

MINISTER YARIV POSTED THE FOLLOWING SATURDAY NIGHT

Immediately after the war broke out, the coalition announced a freeze on all legal reform. At the time, I thought it was wrong to engage in controversial issues when the country was engaged in a multi-front war.

A few weeks after the outbreak of the war, I announced my intention to convene the Judicial Selection Committee and bring about the appointment of judges by broad consensus, as is required in wartime. During the months following the outbreak of the war, we were able to appoint 162 judges by consensus of all members of the committee – an unprecedented number.

I was also, and still am, interested in reaching compromises regarding appointments to the Supreme Court. On August 26 of this year, I approached the retired Acting President of the Supreme Court, Justice Uzi Fogelman, and proposed a compromise: Justice Elron would be appointed as the Supreme Court President for a period of about a year, after which the judges’ candidate would be appointed.

In addition, I proposed that the judges submit to the coalition representatives on the committee two candidates for Supreme Court judges, from whom one would be elected, and at the same time that the coalition representatives would present two names, from which the committee would elect one judge. As for the third judge, I proposed that we reach an agreed-upon appointment from among the judges of the district courts throughout the country.

Minutes after I sent Judge Fogelman my proposal, he rejected it with contempt without discussing it at all.

Judge Fogelman knew full well that I was willing to discuss the details of the proposal. The current Acting President, Justice Yitzhak Amit, also knows this. But they chose to dig their heels in their refusal.

Several months ago, a panel of the High Court of Justice, headed by Justice Wilner, decided that my term as Justice Minister would be in title only. Justice Wilner issued an order that effectively stripped me of the authority granted to me by law to set the agenda of the Judicial Selection Committee, and ruled outright that the consensus process that had so far succeeded in bringing about an unprecedented number of appointments was null and void.

Although the order was illegal on its face, I decided to begin the process. I published the names of the candidates in Reshumot (the official publications of the Israeli government), and the Judicial Selection Committee began to discuss the matter.

But the High Court of Justice hastened the process. Last Thursday, in an unprecedented move, the court panel decided that it would set the committee’s agenda itself, and set a deadline to bring a vote on the appointment of a president within five weeks. And the procedure? It was unimportant – no time was allotted for a real discussion of the many reservations that were submitted.

At the same time, the judges and representatives of the Bar Association prevented the broadcast of the committee’s hearings, so that they could appoint Judge Amit in the dark, ignoring the many reservations and the difficult questions that arose from the process.

These unprecedented moves are joined by a series of irresponsible actions and decisions by the Supreme Court and its judges. Several weeks after the terrible massacre of October 7, the High Court of Justice definitively took over the powers of the Knesset and made a decision that had no precedent in the entire world to annul a Basic Law that was passed in the Knesset by a large majority of more than half of all Knesset members. The High Court did not stop there – since the outbreak of the war, it has discussed the conditions of the terrorists who carried out the massacre on October 7, discussed humanitarian aid to Hamas in Gaza, considered ordering the state to release the bodies of terrorists while our hostages are languishing in Hamas tunnels, and a long list of other items.

Only this evening it was announced that Judge Ruth Ronen even arrived at Ofer security prison to closely monitor the prison conditions of the Nukhba terrorists (the vanguard of Hamas’s murder squad – DI).

The government acted responsibly and with the outbreak of the war suspended all engagement in judicial reform. The court, with the utmost irresponsibility, decided to take advantage of this to continue to take over the powers of the Knesset and the government. Today, former State Attorney Moshe Lador (2007-2013) joined this irresponsibility, calling on soldiers to announce that they would refuse to serve.

(It should be noted that as state attorney, Lador was involved in vicious attacks that destroyed two justice ministers – Haim Ramin and Ya’akov Ne’eman – who attempted to reform the AG’s office and reduce its overwhelming, unchecked power – DI)

This is an unacceptable reality. The court urges the Knesset and the government, which have no choice but to act at this time to restore their powers.

I stopped. They continued even more vigorously. I asked to avoid dealing with this now. They set an immediate deadline and dictated the timetable. I worked to reach agreements. They issued unprecedented orders and are acting in a forceful coercion. I ask to bring about agreed appointments that will gain the trust of the entire public. They are closing the doors of the court to anyone who does not think like them.

They left us no choice. It cannot continue like this. We also have rights.