In scathing rebuke, High Court rules Levin must cooperate with Court President Amit

The High Court of Justice ruled unanimously on Sunday that Justice Minister Yariv Levin is obligated to cooperate with Supreme Court President Isaac Amit in order to make appointments to judicial vacancies requiring the approval of both figures, including court presidents and deputy presidents, a Supreme Court registrar, and judges on parole boards.

In a sharply worded ruling, the three justices who presided over the case said Levin himself was exclusively responsible for the failure to make the appointments.

The court pointed out that Levin’s refusal to recognize Amit as president was an extension of his earlier campaign to thwart his appointment altogether, implying that the justice minister’s position was borne of ulterior motives and not real legal objections.

The court also accused Levin of “inappropriately” claiming that Amit’s appointment was invalid, based on his own refusal to complete bureaucratic steps involved in formalizing the appointment, the absence of which, he then claimed to the court, meant Amit’s appointment was invalid.

And the court further accused Levin of hypocrisy since he has recognized Supreme Court Deputy President Noam Sohlberg, who was appointed in the same meeting of the Judicial Selection Committee as Amit.

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In a final withering summation, the court asserted that the legitimacy of Amit’s appointment was so clear that to deny so was “to deny reality.”

The ruling was issued by justices Ofer Grosskopf, Alex Stein, and Yechiel Kasher.

Levin said in response sarcastically that he agreed the justice minister should work together with the Supreme Court president “when there is one.”

The decision is another legal setback for Levin in the High Court, following last week’s ruling that he was obligated to convene the Judicial Selection Committee to fill the dozens of vacancies on judicial benches around the country after 16 months of refusal to convene the panel to make such appointments.

Levin’s refusal to make appointments has led to an acute lack of judges on numerous magistrate and district courts around the country, with some district courts particularly badly affected, harming the courts’ ability to advance the legal process in key cases, including in matters affecting public safety.

The court stated specifically in its ruling that priority should be given to the Beersheba and Haifa district courts, which are short five judges and three judges, respectively.

The rulings against Levin come against the backdrop of the war he has waged against the judiciary since coming into office, part of an ongoing effort by the Netanyahu government to neuter the judicial branch’s ability to check executive power.

Sunday’s ruling comes in response to a petition by the Zulat organization against Levin, which argued that his refusal to make appointments requiring the approval of the Supreme Court president was not professionally motivated and violated his obligations as minister to serve the public.

Levin has refused to recognize Amit as Supreme Court president ever since he was appointed in January 2025 in a vote of the Judicial Selection Committee.

Amit had refused to convene the committee because he did not have a majority for his candidate for the presidency, but the High Court ruled it unlawful not to hold a vote. Levin acquiesced to the court order and convened the committee, but he and the two other coalition members on the panel boycotted the session in which Amit was elected.

In further unprecedented steps, the justice minister then boycotted Amit’s swearing-in ceremony, refused to co-sign the appointment order along with President Isaac Herzog, and refused to publish Amit’s appointment in the state gazette as required by law.

Levin has also refused to meet with Amit or cooperate with him in any way ever since, including over judicial appointments requiring both their approval.

Levin, through his attorney, argued in court that Amit was not lawfully serving as Supreme Court president since only six members of the Judicial Selection Committee were present for the vote.

He further argued that since he had not signed Amit’s appointment order or published the appointment in the state gazette, he was not legitimately Supreme Court president.

The court rejected both arguments.

The judges stated that the plain reading of the relevant laws shows that the requirements for a minimum number of members in the Judicial Selection Committee relates to the number of members appointed to the panel, and not to the number of members present in a committee vote as Levin claimed.

The court further noted that although Levin argued in court that Amit’s appointment was invalid because only six committee members were present, that issue appeared not to be a problem for him when signing the appointment order for Sohlberg, who was elected deputy president during the very same committee session that Levin had his coalition colleagues boycotted.

The judges wrote that Levin had failed to present “any convincing response to this question.”

The court asserted, based on previous rulings, that the justice minister’s signature on the appointment order and the publication of the appointment in the state gazette were mere formalities, and were never intended by the legislature as a means by which to grant the justice minister a veto over appointments, since it would obviate the process in the Judicial Selection Committee.

All of Levin’s actions from the outset were part of his “repeated attempts to thwart the appointment… and, after it was completed, his attempts to undermine the legitimacy of the appointment,” the court wrote.

The justice also wrote that Levin’s very arguments were “not only unacceptable” but also fundamentally illegitimate and should not have been made in court, since the justice minister was the cause of the very problem he claimed was the obstacle to Amit’s appointment.

“The unambiguous conclusion from the deliberation we held is that Justice Isaac Amit is the Supreme Court president from the day he was sworn in and until the end of his term. Anyone seeking to deny this seeks to deny reality,” the justices wrote of Levin, and labeled his arguments “spurious.”

The court therefore ruled that Levin must coordinate with Amit as quickly as possible to make the appointments requiring their agreement where those vacancies exist.