Levin to vet all 12 judges for Chief Justice, rejecting requests to drop out

Justice Minister Yariv Levin’s office said on Tuesday that he plans on vetting all 12 High Court justices for the role of chief justice, despite 10 of them removing their candidacy.

The 10 justices did not apply for the position, but Levin announced their candidacy on Sunday regardless, citing the wording of Israeli law, which says that the chief justice is chosen from amongst the High Court justices and does not require them to put their names forward. According to Levin’s office, the law does not include a provision that enables them to rescind their candidacy, and he therefore rejected them.

On Sunday night, 10 justices out of the 12 contacted the Judicial Selection Committee with a request to remove their names. The request ended Levin’s hope that at least one other justice would consider joining Isaac Amit and Yosef Elron and compete for the position.

The court currently has 13 members (out of 15 spots), but Justice Uzi Vogelman is scheduled to retire on October 6 and was therefore not included on the candidacy list.

Levin’s office said on Tuesday that the letters were filed after the justices faced “organized pressure” to remove their candidacy. His office did not provide proof for this claim and did not answer a query to that effect. Levin’s office added that the fact that the letters were filed collectively “spread in all directions a stench of severe disruption of an election process.” He added that his move was intended to give the public its “few remaining rights, to vet all of the candidates and hear the reservations and oppositions regarding them.”

The court’s spokesperson responded in a statement that “no pressure had been applied, including organized pressure on any of the judges to remove their candidacy as claimed, and therefore the claim about disrupting the election process is absurd.”

Questions over authority

Other than the chief justice position, the committee will also elect a deputy chief justice. According to the seniority practice, the chief justice is traditionally the longest-serving justice on the bench, and the deputy is the second-longest serving justice. Amit is the longest-serving justice, and Noam Sohlberg is the second longest. Sohlberg, therefore, attempted to rescind his candidacy for chief justice but not for deputy chief justice, and Amit attempted to rescind his candidacy for deputy chief justice.

The remaining candidates for chief justice thus appeared to be Amit and Elron, and the remaining candidates for deputy chief justice appeared to be Elron and Sohlberg. However, Levin’s rejection of their request to remove their candidacy means that for the time being, all 12 justices are still candidates for both positions.

Levin opposes the seniority practice, and prefers the conservative Elron as chief justice over the liberal Amit. The nine-member Judicial Selection Committee includes Levin and two other members of the governing coalition, who are likely to support Elron, but the remaining six – three High Court justices, two representatives of the Israel Bar Association, and one MK from the opposition – are likely to support Amit. Levin is therefore expected to lose the vote and for this reason has refrained for nearly a year from holding the vote.

The High Court ruled on September 8 that Levin did not have authority to delay the vote for an unlimited period because he was unhappy with the expected outcome, and therefore ordered him to initiate the process to appoint a permanent chief justice. Levin viewed the order as a breach of his authority and accused the justices of acting unfairly in order to appoint their preferred candidate.

Levin responded on Sunday by announcing that all 12 justices were candidates, despite the fact that only Amit and Elron had applied. He stated that the public has the right to send a written objection to the appointment of each of them, and the dedicated email address for this has already been circulated on social media by supporters of the minister’s move.

Levin’s goal in doing so was to hold a vetting process that would embarrass some of the justices and significantly lengthen the election process.

A spokesperson for Levin said on Tuesday morning that “thousands” of complaints had been filed.

Bini Ashkenazi contributed to this report.