Supreme Court justices walk out of Judicial Selection Committee in protest of Levin
Justices leave meeting because minister invited external legal experts, which has never been done, to opine on scrapping longstanding seniority system for court president selection
All three justices of the Supreme Court who are members of the Judicial Selection Committee walked out of Thursday’s meeting of the panel after Justice Minister Yariv Levin, who chairs the forum, invited external experts to give their opinions on some of the irregular practices he is seeking to implement in the committee.
The three justices, Acting Supreme Court President Isaac Amit and Justices Daphne Barak Erez and Noam Sohlberg, left the meeting after Levin presented the external figures, all of whom are conservative legal experts.
The three judges wrote a letter to Levin on Wednesday protesting his invitation of the external experts, saying that the committee has never done so before and “that is how it has always been, and our position is that these arrangements should not be changed.”
Since Levin’s judicial overhaul stalled last year, partly due to a burgeoning protest movement and also the outbreak of war following the October 7 atrocities, he has refused to appoint a new Supreme Court president or fill open seats on the court.
In the war Levin has been waging against the judiciary for the last two years, he has sought and still seeks to dispense with the seniority system for the first time in the Supreme Court’s history in order to have hardline conservative Yosef Elron appointed as president, and has spent the past 13 months trying to prevent Amit’s selection.
Amit, a liberal, is a candidate for court president and next in line for the position under the seniority system, while Sohlberg, a conservative, is similarly next in line for vice president. The court’s spokesperson added that the judges also left in order to avoid giving a “bad impression.”
Amit became acting president in October, taking over for the retiring acting president Uzi Vogelman, who himself got the job because Levin refused to call a vote following the retirement of former court chief Esther Hayut.
Levin invited conservative legal academics Prof. Talia Einhorn, Dr. Shuki Segev and Prof. Gidi Sapir, together with hardline conservative MK and chairman of the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee Simcha Rothman, to opine on Levin’s proposals to broadcast the deliberations of the committee and discuss whether or not to appoint a new Supreme Court president through the traditional seniority system.
A spokesperson for the Judicial Authority claimed that the justices left because they had a conflict of interests in the discussion regarding the use of the seniority system, whereby the justice with the most years on the court is the sole candidate nominated for president.
The committee already deliberated at length on the highly unusual request of Levin to broadcast the hearings, something which has never happened before and would require amending the committee’s regulations.
The justices said in their letter to Levin that they were also opposed to broadcasting the committee’s deliberations since it would harm the privacy of the proceedings and have a “chilling effect.”
The Supreme Court in its capacity as High Court of Justice was set to begin a hearing Thursday on a request for a contempt of court order against Levin, after he failed to call a vote for the appointment of a new Supreme Court president in the previous Judicial Selection Committee. The court ordered Levin in September to call a vote for a new president, which was supposed to have happened sometime in November.
The justices were expected to rejoin the hearing after the experts leave.
On Monday, Justice Amit sent a letter to Levin, urging him to meet to advance key appointments in the judiciary while noting that the minister had refused to meet with him and his predecessor for the past six months.
Writing to Levin, Amit said that appointments needed to be made for court presidents and senior judges, registrars for the Supreme Court and the National Labor Court; and that members of different statutory committees must be selected — all of which requires cooperation between himself and the justice minister.
“Since I began my role as Acting President of the Supreme Court, I have requested to hold regular weekly meetings with you, aimed at ensuring the proper functioning of the judicial system and continuing to provide legal services to the public in Israel. Unfortunately, these requests were denied,” Amit wrote.
“For about half a year, since June 2024, when you ceased holding regular working meetings with President Vogelman, important issues have accumulated that require joint attention, which are currently not being advanced,” he added.
“This situation is directly harming the proper operations of the legal system and the interests of those before the courts,” Amit told Levin.
A source close to Levin cited in Hebrew media said in response that “Justice Amit can send the letter to himself by return mail. Indeed, the time has come to work without orders and with agreement. There is no such thing as joint work when it is convenient and court injunctions when it is convenient.”
The comment refers to a September High Court of Justice ruling that Levin must convene the Judicial Selection Committee and elect a new president for the Supreme Court as quickly as possible, after refusing to do so for a year.
