Bill to increase political control over judicial appointments approved by Knesset panel

Amid tempestuous scenes, a Knesset committee on Wednesday sent a highly controversial bill that would greatly increase political control over the judicial appointments process in Israel, for its final readings.

Opposition MKs, including head of the National Unity party Benny Gantz, denounced Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee chairman MK Simcha Rothman and the coalition in general, accusing it of dividing the nation once again with contentious legislation at a time of war.

And several opposition MKs reacted furiously after Rothman refused to allow opening comments on the legislation before the final votes in committee. Rothman held the votes regardless, ejecting Democrats MK Gilad Kariv after he protested.

The bill will now be passed to the Knesset plenum for its back-to-back second and third readings, and could be brought to a vote as early as next week.

The more pressing need of the coalition to pass the budget before the March 31 deadline may mean, however, that the judicial appointments law is brought only in the last two days of the Knesset term before the Passover recess — April 1 and 2.

The law, if passed, would only take effect at the beginning of the next Knesset term, meaning after the next general election, and there would be likely be petitions against it at the High Court.

Speaking in the committee, Gantz accused the coalition of reviving the societal divisions that had raged in the months before Hamas’s October 7 assault, and asserted that the government was instituting a “tyranny of the majority” by ramming through its judicial overhaul law.

And Opposition Leader Yair Lapid said he would repeal the law if he wins the next elections, and called on the public to take to the streets and demonstrate against the bill, as well as to demand a deal for the return of the hostages still being held by Hamas in Gaza.

Rothman insisted that the bill was important in asserting the primacy of the Knesset over the judiciary, saying that one of the problems the legislation was designed to fix was judicial intervention in constitutional arrangements.

The opposition has pointed out that the new legislation gives far greater power to politicians over the judicial appointments process than in the past and is likely to politicize the judiciary, and thereby undermine its independence as the only real check on legislative and executive power in the democratic system.

The coalition argues that the current system gives the judiciary too much control over judicial appointments, and that giving politicians greater control would redress this situation.

The bill was introduced to the Knesset by Justice Minister Yariv Levin and Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar as an ostensible compromise over previously proposed legislation that would have given the coalition almost complete control over all judicial appointments.

The new legislation was initially backed by former cabinet minister Yizhar Shai, who was a member of Gantz’s Israel Resilience party, and Brig. Gen. (Res.) Dedi Simchi.

Shai recently retracted his support, saying the issue was too divisive to deal with at a time of war, when the country is so politically divided and when Hamas is still holding hostages.

Sources close to Levin have said that it unlikely that any of the three empty spots on the Supreme Court will be filled until the new law takes effect.

The legislation would remove the two representatives of the Israel Bar Association currently on the nine-member Judicial Selection Committee, which makes all judicial appointments, and replace them with one lawyer to be directly chosen by the coalition and another chosen by the opposition.

Appointments to lower courts would be made by a simple majority, but unlike the current system would need at least one vote each from committee representatives of the coalition, opposition and the Supreme Court, granting all sides a veto.

Until now, neither the judiciary, the coalition or the opposition could veto a lower court appointment.

Appointments to the Supreme Court would need at least one vote from the coalition and opposition, but not require any votes from the three Supreme Court justices on the Judicial Selection Committee, giving the political representatives on the panel a veto while virtually stripping the judiciary of any influence over appointments to the top court.

In the event that there are two empty slots on the Supreme Court and the coalition and opposition sides veto all of each other’s nominations for a year, the justice minister can activate a deadlock-breaking mechanism whereby both sides nominate three candidates and the other side must pick at least one.

This deadlock mechanism can only be used once in every four-year Knesset term.

One change made to the legislation during the committee process was to establish a minimum age limit of 55 for a Supreme Court judge, to stop potential abuse of the deadlock system to appoint very young, ideologically radical judges who could remain on the court for decades.

Another change was to require that at least two-thirds of the Supreme Court justices come from the district courts to ensure a majority of judges on the top court have long-term experience as jurists.

“There was a strategic reason for [Hamas head Yahya] Sinwar to do what he did, and there was a reason for the division in Israeli society when he identified a weak point like a modern Amalek,” said Gantz in reference to the ancient enemy of the Israelites described by the Bible.

“Here we are a year and a half later, giving the same gift back,” Gantz told Rothman.

Gantz said the coalition’s drive to pass the bill was “not majority rule but the tyranny of the majority,” adding that “in a democracy the only security the minority has is that it is not faced with the tyranny of the majority.”

Lapid promised to overturn the legislation if it passes if a new government takes office, and condemned the legislation as an effort to subordinate the judicial system to elected politicians.

“Let it be clear: The wording of the law passed today by the Knesset Constitution Committee to change the composition of the Judicial Selection Committee is not a compromise, not a correction, and was not reached through dialogue. It is the most extreme, most violent, and most rotten wording there is,” he declared.

“This is a law that says only one thing — the judges will be in the pockets of the politicians. The politicians will appoint them, control them, and make sure they do what they are told. We will stop this. In the first week of the next government, this violent and extortionate law will be repealed!”

Rothman insisted that the legislation would be a corrective to what he insists is the excessive power of the judiciary at present.

“All of us here in the Knesset will come to a conclusion about how we see the constitutional arrangements, and the next day the High Court of Justice or the attorney general will throw a new issue into the discourse, and one of the most difficult problems in this whole matter is that the agreements of this house [the Knesset] are not the end of the story,” said Rothman.

“That is what this proposal is intended to deal with, among other things.”

Sam Sokol contributed to this report