The Judicial Selection Committee on Sunday confirmed Justice Isaac Amit as the permanent chief justice and Justice Noam Sohlberg as his deputy, ending a 15-month legal and political saga that began in October 2023 following the retirement of chief justice Esther Hayut.
Amit was next in line based on the “seniority” tradition, where the longest-serving judge becomes chief justice. However, Justice Minister Yariv Levin, who opposed the “seniority” tradition and preferred conservative Yosef Elron as chief justice, refrained from holding the vote.
The deputy chief justice at the time of Hayut’s retirement, Uzi Vogelman, took over as interim chief justice, but Vogelman retired in October 2024. Amit then took over as interim chief justice. Levin also refrained from filling the vacancies created by the departure of Hayut, Vogelman, and Anat Baron, who retired alongside Hayut in 2023.
The law says that when a chief justice retires, the justice minister must convene the Judicial Selection Committee to appoint the next chief justice. However, the law does not lay out a time frame for this to happen.
The High Court ruled in September that the justice minister did not have the authority to delay the appointment indefinitely and ordered him to appoint a permanent chief justice.
Levin did not do so, and in a hearing in December over whether Levin should be held in contempt of court, the judges defined a deadline – January 16 – to fulfill its orders.
On January 16 the court granted Levin 10 more days to bring before the committee information regarding allegations of a number of conflict-of-interest violations by Amit.
The allegations, which emerged in a series of reports over the past two weeks, included unreported court proceedings by the Tel Aviv Municipality against a series of owners of a building in Tel Aviv, including Amit and his brother; a series of cases that Amit oversaw that involved First International Bank of Israel and Dor Alon, despite his brother being involved in these companies at different points; alleged building infractions in Amit’s home in Mevaseret Zion; and a ruling regarding boards of directors of government companies, that allegedly could have affected his brother.
‘Coordinated smear campaign’
Amit refuted all of the allegations, and called the series of reports a “coordinated smear campaign.” Regarding the building in Tel Aviv, he explained that to avoid any semblance of a conflict of interest, he had given his brother full legal stewardship and was not involved in the case; that the cases involving First International Bank of Israel, Dor Alon, and the boards of directors were either not during the period his brother was involved, or very general such that he did not need to recuse himself as there was no conflict of interest; and that there were no building infractions, as renovations were done with the necessary permits.
Levin, and fellow coalition members on the committee, National Missions Minister Orit Strock and Otzma Yehudit MK Yitzhak Kreuzer, boycotted the Judicial Selection Committee meeting on Sunday.
In a joint statement following Amit’s appointment, Levin, Strock, and Kreuzer called the appointment a “moral disgrace,” arguing that the candidacy of other senior officials had been struck down for far less than the allegations against Amit.
“No less serious is the fact that the ‘election’ was made by an illegal order of the Supreme Court, at the height of an inherently illegal process, which took away the justice minister’s statutory powers and turned the Judicial Selection Committee into a rubber stamp of the Supreme Court,” the three wrote.
Three called it a sad day for democracy and a sad day for the judicial system.
“A president ‘elected’ in such a way will not be able to gain the public’s trust, which is essential for the judicial system as a fundamental condition for its existence,” they said.
“On behalf of a large public whose democratic rights were trampled in this illegal process, and whose expectation for a fair and moral judicial system was also trampled, we will not stop acting until we bring about a fundamental correction of this disgraceful situation.”
Levin also wrote he “did not recognize” Amit as the chief justice.
Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana also criticized the appointment, calling the election process “crooked.”
President Isaac Herzog, opposition leader MK Yair Lapid, the Movement for Quality of Government, and a number of other opposition MKs and civil society organizations applauded the appointment.
Amit revealed in an exchange of letters with Levin last week that the justice minister in 2024 has attempted to cut a deal whereby he would permit Amit’s appointment to chief justice in exchange for Amit’s agreement to appoint at least one of Levin’s personal preferences to fill one of the vacancies on the High Court bench.
Levin has said he wants to appoint either Aviad Bakshi, head of the legal department in Kohelet Policy Forum, or Raphael Bitton to the bench. Both were involved in formulating the controversial judicial reforms of 2023.
Amit refused, saying he would not agree to appoint someone he viewed as unqualified to sit on the bench.
The refusal to appoint Bakshi or Bitton led Levin to formulate a new bill proposal alongside Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar to alter the makeup of the Judicial Selection Committee.
Among other provisions, the new proposal gives representatives of the coalition and opposition mutual veto power on High Court appointments, but says that if two vacancies remain open for a year, each side can propose three candidates, out of which the other side must pick one.
The bill is currently being prepared for its second and third reading in the Knesset Constitution Committee. According to its current version, it will only take effect beginning with the next Knesset.
The chief justice is considered a symbol of the state and has a number of statutory authorities. These include deciding on the size and makeup of benches in certain cases; setting policy for the court system in general and the High Court in particular; and appointing the members of a state commission of inquiry.
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