Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara on Sunday urged the High Court of Justice to invalidate the government’s law restructuring the Judicial Selection Committee, arguing that it inflicts “severe and unprecedented harm” on the independence of the judiciary and the democratic character of the state.
In her formal response to the petitions filed against the legislation, Baharav-Miara said the law upends the decades-long balance between professional and political representatives on the nine-member panel, replacing it with a clear political majority.
Such a shift, she warned, would transform judicial appointments into “a political selection mechanism,” undermine the separation of powers, and erode the core principles that define Israel as a democratic state.
Her position sets the stage for what may become a substantial constitutional examination of the government’s authority to reshape the judiciary. The court will hear the petitions on December 10, and the justices are expected to confront the question of whether the law constitutes such a structural attack on judicial independence that even a Basic Law – normally safe from judicial review – can be struck down.
If the court accepts her stance, it would mark only the second time a Basic Law has been invalidated, following the 2023 reversal of the reasonableness clause.
New law shifts judicial selection to political majority
Since the 1950s, the Judicial Selection Committee has maintained a balance of five to four with a professional majority: three Supreme Court justices, two Bar Association representatives, two coalition members, and two opposition representatives. That equilibrium, rooted in decades of practice, was designed to combine professional judgment with democratic accountability.
The new law, passed in March as part of the coalition’s broader judicial overhaul, fundamentally reverses that arrangement, granting political actors and their appointees a clear majority by replacing the Bar Association’s seats with “public representatives” chosen by the coalition and opposition. The legislation also eliminates the Supreme Court veto over its own appointments by lowering the threshold for selecting High Court justices from a special majority to a simple majority – an issue the attorney-general identifies as a critical weakening of the judiciary’s independence.
Supporters of the legislation argue that the existing structure gave “legal elites” – particularly the Bar Association – outsized influence, despite recurring scandals and questions about professionalism. They also contend that allowing sitting justices to participate in selecting their successors would be an anomaly in other democracies, where politicians hold greater sway over judicial appointments.
Legal scholars have noted, however, that Israel lacks the firm constitutional guardrails common in other democracies and, over the years, its system of checks and balances has depended more on political norms than on fixed structural protections, marking such an attack on the judiciary as exceptionally severe.
For over a year, the committee’s work has already been frozen because Justice Minister Yariv Levin refuses to convene it under its current composition. The prolonged paralysis has deepened a national shortage of judges, leaving the Supreme Court operating with only 11 justices out of 15.
In her response, Baharav-Miara links the legislative push directly to this crisis, arguing that a partisan reshaping of the committee cannot justify ongoing harm to the justice system’s functioning.
The petitions will be heard by Supreme Court President Isaac Amit, Deputy President Noam Sohlberg, and Justice Dafna Barak-Erez. Because the case concerns a Basic Law, the court may later expand the panel to include additional justices as it did during the deliberations on the reasonableness clause.