High Court suggests government retreat from bid to fire AG under new process

The High Court of Justice suggests that the government should consider going back to the original method of firing the attorney general, likely indicating that it does not support a process innovated by the government to bypass the established mechanism to fire current Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara.

“Perhaps it would be right to consider – in order to reduce division in these days – returning, essentially, to the framework for ending the tenure of the attorney general as laid out in the report of the public committee for examining the methods of appointing the attorney general,” writes Judge Noam Sohlberg in response to a request for an urgent hearing on the issue.

Sohlberg is referring to the Shamgar Committee, which issued a series of recommendations for how to hire and fire the attorney general in 1998, which were adopted in a cabinet resolution in 2000.

That included appointing the attorney general through a public, professional committee headed by a retired Supreme Court judge, which included a former attorney general or former justice minister, and two other members.

In March this year, the government initiated the process of firing the attorney general under the terms of the 2000 resolution, but was unable to find a former attorney general or justice minister who would sit on the committee.

So in June, the cabinet passed a resolution superseding the 2000 measure and establishing a five-member ministerial committee that could make the recommendation instead of the public professional panel under the old system.

The ministerial committee recommended that the government fire the attorney general earlier this week, and a vote on the issue could be brought to the cabinet next week.

Sohlberg has already ruled that if the cabinet does vote to fire Baharav-Miara, the decision will not come into effect until the High Court issues a ruling on petitions against the new dismissal process.