Landmark
Law Reforming Judicial Appointments Passes Knesset
In the last week of its summer session, the Knesset passed a landmark law reforming the method of appointing judges to the Supreme Court. The previous issue of Liberty Monitor reported that the law had passed the Knesset Constitution and Law Committee.
The law provides that appointments to the Supreme Court require a special majority of seven members out of the nine-member Judicial Appointments Committee. Given the structure of the committee, this means that the government of the day will have a veto over Supreme Court appointments, and will be able to negotiate deals over appointments with the judiciary. The law is the most significant change in the structure of Israeli government since direct elections to the office of Prime Minister were abandoned in 2003 and probably the most significant affecting the judiciary in since 1953, when the current system of appointments was adopted.
The structure of the Judicial Appointments Committee, by law, is: Three Supreme Court judges, including the Chief Justice ex officio, two members of the Governing Council of the Israel Bar Association, the Justice Minister and one other minister, and two Knesset members. By longstanding tradition, one member from the Knesset is appointed from the coalition and one from the opposition. This structure means that the government of the day never controls more than one-third of the committee — two ministers and a Knesset member.
Historically, the judges on the committee vote as a bloc (a law adopted in 2004 made coordinating votes on the committee illegal, but the judges have never taken it seriously). Representatives of the Bar Association, whose livelihood is often dependent on not making the judges angry, generally vote with them. Thus judicial appointments have, in effect, been controlled by the Supreme Court.
The new law makes it possible for the governing coalition to block appointments to the Supreme Court and to force the judges to negotiate over judicial appointments. It represents a significant shift of power from the judiciary to the elected branches of government. With time, it could lead to a significant change in the ideological composition of the Supreme Court and the entire Israeli judiciary.
The new law was sponsored by MK Gideon Saar (Likud), based on a proposal first made by MK Michael Eitan (Likud) five years ago.
The tenure of Justice Minister Daniel Friedman has been marked by numerous legislative initiatives meant to redress the balance of power between the judiciary and the elected branches of government, now heavily weighted in favor of the former. Many of these initiatives have failed to pass; they are uniformly opposed by the Labor Party, a coalition member and a party whose ideology and interests closely match those of the judicial establishment. The law just passed is the most significant reform of the judiciary achieved to date.