Israel’s Supreme Court prepares to rule on its own fate

Group will hear appeal against judicial overhaul

JERUSALEM — For the first time in Israel’s history, all 15 of its Supreme Court justices will crowd onto the bench on Sept. 12 to hear a case together. The reason: This one is so momentous that it could not only decide the powers of the court itself, but also kindle a constitutional crisis.

The 15-member court — which meets in a graceful building of beige stone, straight lines, and arches on a hill in Jerusalem alongside the Knesset, Israel’s parliament — includes secular liberals, religiously observant Jews, and conservative residents of Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank. One justice is an Arab Israeli; six are women, including the court’s president.

The justices will be scrutinized like never before as they begin hearing an appeal against the first part of a judicial overhaul that the government pushed through parliament in July, angering many Israelis and stoking street protests across the country.

Many Israelis fear that the overhaul will weaken the court as a check on the government, currently the most right-wing and religiously conservative in Israeli history; accelerate a rightward shift of the judiciary that started almost a decade ago; and make it more politicized and less independent.

The government has primed itself for battle against the court by portraying it as a bastion of a secular, left-leaning elite and a closed club out of touch with changes sweeping the country. Experts say that characterization has not been true for years.

Ayelet Shaked, a former justice minister and right-wing politician, said the court was “very liberal and progressive” when she took office in 2015. But, she said in an interview, “I made it my goal to diversify the Supreme Court and make it more conservative, and that’s what I did.”

During her four-year term as justice minister, Shaked led the judicial selection committee and used her sway to reach deals with other members and bring in candidates of her choice. Now, she said of the court: “It is more balanced than before.”

Michael Sfard, a human rights lawyer and political activist who has represented Israelis and Palestinians in the Supreme Court, agrees that the balance has shifted. The court is “much more right-wing, pro-settler, and nationalist today than it was 20 years ago,” he said.

With its judicial overhaul, the hard-line coalition led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants to shift that balance further to the right by having more control over the choice of the justices sitting on the Supreme Court and ultimately to grant less power to the judiciary and more to the elected government.

The hearing in September, during which the court will essentially be deciding whether to accept a curbing of its powers, heralds a potential showdown between the top judicial authority and the ruling coalition, and could fundamentally reshape Israeli democracy.

The court’s president, Chief Justice Esther Hayut, prompted an uproar in January when she excoriated the government’s judicial overhaul plan as an “unbridled attack on the judicial system” that would “deal a fatal blow” to its independence.

However, it is unclear how the court will rule because the judges are officially tasked with upholding the law and generally avoid making public statements on political issues.

Israeli human rights lawyers say that the court’s rulings have become increasingly conservative.

Still, human rights groups say the court is an important backstop; this month, for example, the court indicated that it would intervene to ensure that an existing adoption law was not used to discriminate against same-sex couples.

“The court is still the only platform that defends human rights in Israel,” said Noa Sattath, executive director of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, one of the groups that have petitioned the court to strike down the government’s judicial legislation.