Levin declines to sign official announcement of new Supreme Court president

Having vowed to boycott Amit Isaac’s nomination as top judge, justice minister leaves formal process to director of courts administration instead

Jeremy Sharon is The Times of Israel’s legal affairs and settlements reporter

Jutisce Minister Yariv Levin attends a Constitution, Law and Justice Committee meeting at the Knesset, on January 21, 2025. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
Jutisce Minister Yariv Levin attends a Constitution, Law and Justice Committee meeting at the Knesset, on January 21, 2025. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

Justice Minister Yariv Levin declined Monday to sign the official announcement of the appointment of Justice Isaac Amit as the new president of the Supreme Court in the state gazette, with the director of the Israel Courts Administration, Judge Tzachi Uziel, signing instead.

Usually, it would be Levin, as justice minister, who signs such announcements in the gazette, the official register of formal state processes, but he has vowed to boycott Amit as president of the Supreme Court in protest at how the court, sitting as the High Court of Justice, ordered him to hold a vote for a new president after he refused to do so for over a year.

Levin will also boycott Amit’s swearing-in ceremony next week at the President’s Residence, while Hebrew media has reported that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will also not attend the event.

It would be the first time in Israeli history that a sitting premier fails to attend the swearing-in of a chief justice.

According to Channel 12 news, Netanyahu’s associates are attributing the decision to security concerns and to the premier having a “conflict of interest” since he is a criminal defendant.

However, the network last week cited unnamed political sources as saying that the move is actually part of the coalition’s efforts to delegitimize Amit’s tenure, after Levin tried to thwart the appointment and recently said he doesn’t recognize Amit and will boycott him.

Supreme Court Justice Isaac Amit leaves the offices of the Israel Courts Administration in Jerusalem after a meeting of the Judicial Selection Committee which appointed him new Supreme Court president, January 26, 2025. (Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)

Amit was appointed last week after an unprecedented 16 months without a permanent Supreme Court president and in the face of unrelenting opposition from Levin.

Immediately following the vote, Levin labeled the appointment process as “illegitimate to its core” and declared he did not recognize Amit as chief justice, adding that he would not work with him on essential business of the judiciary which requires cooperation between the justice minister and the Supreme Court president.

The entire fraught process of appointing a new president has witnessed a series of unprecedented events bordering on constitutional crises, from a justice minister refusing to fill the position of Supreme Court president for such an extended period of time to the High Court intervening and ordering the appointment be made.

The impact of the hardline minister’s stance is that key appointments within the judiciary, such as presidents of district courts and crucial administrative positions that need the cooperation of the justice minister and the Supreme Court president, will be impossible to make as long as Levin continues to boycott Amit.

Levin’s refusal to make the appointment has been accompanied by efforts to change the process for all judicial appointments in Israel through his judicial overhaul agenda, in which he is seeking to assert greater government control over the selection of judges.

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