Justice Minister Yariv Levin must cooperate with Chief Justice Isaac Amit on matters that require joint action by both parties, the court ruled on Sunday.
These matters include appointing presidents and vice presidents to various courts, appointing associate judges, appointing a registrar to the High Court, and appointing judges or retired judges to serve on parole committees.
'For once, I completely agree with the High Court's ruling'
Levin responded to the ruling, saying, “For once, I completely agree with the High Court’s ruling. The justice minister must certainly cooperate with the president of the High Court of Justice, should one exist.”
Attorney Amit Bachar, head of the Israeli Bar Association, issued a statement siding with the court. “There are judges in Jerusalem,” Bachar said, “there is no justice minister. Levin violates all his ministerial duties to the citizens of Israel, acting as if he had resigned and making himself irrelevant. The High Court did well to order Levin to cooperate with Amit.”
MK Efrat Rayten, chairwoman of the Democrats party, also made a statement against Levin, saying, “Levin’s childish behavior and deliberate destruction of the judicial system at the expense of the public interest are illegal.”
High Court rules Justice Minister Yariv Levin must convene Judicial Selection Committee
The High Court ruled on June 1 that Levin must convene the Judicial Selection Committee to select judges for the district courts, with priority given to the district courts in Beersheba and Haifa.
The decision was unanimously adopted by the three justices, Ofer Grosskopf, Alex Stein, and Gila Kanfi Steinitz.
Levin has refused to convene the committee for approximately a year and a half due to a lack of a broad consensus on candidate selection, leading to a severe shortage of judges across “all tiers of the judicial branch,” the High Court ruled.
According to the High Court, the shortage “has severely impacted the court system’s ability to ensure the law is enforced and to provide a high-quality, efficient service to the general public.”
“The court clarified that while the minister is not obligated at this time to convene the committee for the purpose of filling the vacant seats on the Supreme Court, given the special legal arrangement regarding judicial appointments to this specific bench, there is significant difficulty in the fact that this bench has been operating with a partial roster for nearly three years,” it said.
Uri Sela contributed to this report.