High Court rules Levin must cooperate with Supreme Court President Amit

The High Court of Justice rules unanimously that Justice Minister Yariv Levin is obligated to cooperate with Supreme Court President Isaac Amit in order to make appointments to judicial vacancies requiring the approval of both figures, including court presidents and deputy presidents, a Supreme Court registrar, and judges on parole boards.

Levin has refused to recognize Amit as Supreme Court president ever since he was appointed in January 2015 in a vote of the Judicial Selection Committee, and as a result, has refused to meet with him or cooperate with him in any way, including over judicial appointments requiring both their signatures.

Levin’s representative argued in court that Amit was not lawfully serving as Supreme Court president since Levin had not signed his appointment order or published Amit’s appointment in the state gazette.

The High Court rules, however, that the missing procedural components of Amit’s appointment were due to Levin’s own actions. It says that Levin’s failure to complete these procedures was part of the justice minister’s “repeated efforts to thwart the appointment” and his efforts afterwards to “harm the legitimacy of the appointment.”

The court added that these steps were merely procedural and the failure to complete them did not impact the validity of Amit’s appointment.

“The unambiguous conclusion from the deliberation we held is that Justice Isaac Amit is the Supreme Court president from the day he was sworn in and until the end of his term. Anyone seeking to deny this seeks to deny reality,” the justices wrote of Levin, labeling his arguments “spurious.”

The court therefore rules that Levin must coordinate with Amit as quickly as possible to make appointments requiring their agreement.