Strok Urges Judges’ Panel to Return to Consensus Appointments
Ahead of the Israel Judicial Selection Committee’s upcoming session, Minister Orit Strok says the body should return to the consensual appointment method that, in her view, previously produced diversity, responsibility and public trust. She says the committee, on which she sits, will reconvene this week for three marathon meetings after not meeting for a year and a half, and she hopes it can resume agreed appointments and bring relief to the court system.
Strok recalls that she opened an earlier committee meeting by quoting an Ehud Banai song about the gulf between people, using it to argue for bridge-building rather than majority versus minority voting. She says committee members then agreed to pursue consensus, and that the process eventually led to about 200 judges being appointed from across Israeli society. She says the committee also worked to diversify the judiciary, advance candidates blocked by what she calls ideological vetoes or a semi-professional “Committee of Two,” and block nominees she viewed as lacking integrity or extreme in national responsibility.
According to Strok, that process ended about a year and a half ago when the judges on the committee abandoned consensus and turned to the High Court of Justice, which she says was used to pressure the justice minister. She accuses the court route of trampling the minister’s legal authority to convene and run the committee, turning the panel into a “puppet” of the High Court, and severely damaging public trust while deepening the committee crisis. She says the result was no committee meetings and no new judicial appointments, leaving vacancies and increasing the workload on sitting judges.
Strok says Justice Minister Yariv Levin made extensive mediation efforts that produced an agreed list of candidates half a year ago, a list she says could have allowed dozens or even hundreds of appointments. She says that path was abandoned again because of a new petition to the High Court. Strok now worries that judges’ remarks in a recent High Court hearing on a petition against a Basic Law amendment that would change the committee’s composition show they may again refuse to cooperate, especially because they rejected any role for “politicians” in choosing judges. She concludes by invoking the Talmudic principle that “in the way a person wants to go, they are led,” and urges the judges to choose compromise, democracy and public unity.
