Israel’s justice minister imposes four new Supreme Court justices

WITH the parliamentary opposition in Israel hopelessly splintered, demoralised and without an agreed leader, it has fallen mainly to Israel’s fiercely independent Supreme Court and its combative media to hold the government of Binyamin Netanyahu to account. No wonder both institutions have been in its crosshairs for years. With four justices reaching the mandatory retirement age of 70 this year, it has had a rare opportunity to influence the court’s make-up.

On February 22nd the justice minister, Ayelet Shaked (pictured), took full advantage of this opportunity. A former aide of Mr Netanyahu and now one of the leaders of the right-wing Jewish Home party, she has been spearheading the campaign for a more conservative Supreme Court. The Judicial Appointments Committee, which she chairs, approved the four new Supreme Court justices. Two of them are religious Orthodox Jews (one of whom lives in a West Bank settlement); another has close ties with right-wing politicians; and the fourth, a Christian who fills the court’s Arab seat, is known for usually siding with the state prosecution.

The appointments came after months of deadlock between Ms Shaked and the current president of the court, Miriam Naor, who sought to preserve the court’s independence. An alliance between the politicians and the representatives of the Bar Association on the committee forced the justices to back down and agree on compromise candidates. None of the four, who are all serving district court judges, is seen as a liberal; two of them have a conservative record and the other two are more centrist. The political right was elated at the appointments, echoing Ms Shaked, who announced that “we have changed the course of the legal ship”.

The Supreme Court has been described by its critics as the “Rehavia Junta”, for the name of the neighbourhood in Jerusalem where many of them once resided; elitist and liberal-minded secular left-wingers, aloof and detached from wider Israeli society. While this has long been a grossly inaccurate characterisation of the court, the label has stuck.

The 15 Supreme Court justices serve both as the Israeli legal system’s final court of appeal, and as the High Court for Justice for petitioners against the government on administrative issues and against laws passed by the Knesset. It is in this second role that the court has angered the elected politicians, mostly those from the right but occasionally left-wingers as well. The late Yitzhak Rabin notoriously remarked in 1994 that the Palestinian Authority was better placed than the Israeli government to confront Hamas militants because they could do so unshackled—“without the High Court” and without Israeli human rights organisations watching what they did.

During the past two decades, particularly since the presidency of Aharon Barak, the court has adopted a more interventionist approach, forcing the government to change policy and on a number of occasions ruling that laws passed by the Knesset were unconstitutional. On February 1st the government was forced to send police to clash with hundreds of settlers, on orders from the court, to dismantle the West Bank settlement of Amona, which was built illegally on privately owned Palestinian land. The court is widely expected to rule next month against a controversial “regulation” law passed by the Knesset that would retroactively expropriate Palestinian land in similar circumstances.

Although some on the left have described the new appointments as a “conservative revolution”, that is premature. Even with the new justices, the conservatives remain in a minority on the bench and will not hold the presidency, which is determined by seniority, for at least another seven years. Since few cases are held before the entire bench, the president has considerable influence in determining which justices will hear a specific case. The Supreme Court will remain the most effective opposition to Israel’s government for a while yet. But eventually that could change.