Supreme Court president’s appointment to be formally announced after Levin’s 17-month obstruction

After nearly a year and a half delay, the appointment of Supreme Court President Isaac Amit will finally be published in the state gazette, a declarative step formally announcing his appointment, following a ruling Tuesday by the Supreme Court in its capacity as the High Court of Justice.

The ruling comes after a hearing in the High Court earlier in the morning in which Justice Minister Yariv Levin, who has steadfastly refused to publish Amit’s appointment in the gazette, did not object to Director of the Israel Courts Administration Tzahi Ouziel taking the necessary steps to publish the appointment.

The resolution of the impasse came after the High Court ruled on Sunday that Amit was lawfully appointment president in January 2025 despite Levin’s objections, and that Levin had acted unlawfully by refusing to cooperate with Amit for the appointment of senior figures in the judiciary, such as court presidents and deputy presidents, and a Supreme Court registrar, among others.

The ruling is the denouement of a nearly three-year war Levin has fought against Amit and the High Court, starting in October 2023 when he first refused to convene the Judicial Selection Committee to elect a new Supreme Court president, and then refused to complete the procedural steps for confirming and announcing his Amit’s appointment for 17 months.

Levin has also driven forward the government’s general boycott of the head of the judiciary, which has seen Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana refuse to invite Amit to several key events at the Knesset, including the historic addresses of US President Donald Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the chamber.

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Tuesday’s ruling does not, however, mean that Levin will necessarily comply with the court’s more substantive order from Sunday to cooperate with Amit to make the senior judicial appointments.

Eliad Shraga, head of the Movement for Quality Government in Israel which petitioned the court against Levin’s refusal to cooperate with Amit, lauded his organization’s legal victory, describing it as “another knockout” against the justice minister delivered by the High Court.

“For many months, the justice minister tried to gut [Amit’s] lawful appointment and to challenge the status of the Supreme Court president,” said Shraga.

“Today, the circle is closed: Justice Issac Amit is the president of the Supreme Court, officially and with full authority, and no one else can claim otherwise. This is a victory for the rule of law and the independence of the judiciary, and another defeat for Yariv Levin and his attempts [to carry out] a regime coup.”

Levin remained defiant, however, declaring that the “effort to force me to recognize Amit has failed again,” apparently since Ouziel, not Levin, will carry out the publication of the appointment.

“The High Court judges themselves convened the Judicial Selection Committee in an illegal order they issued, and ‘appointed’ Amit themselves, and now they are also publishing his ‘appointment’ in the state gazette. None of this will change the simple fact – his ‘appointment’ was made through an illegal and fundamentally invalid process. I do not recognize an illegal appointment and will not recognize it,” averred the justice minister.

Levin has refused to recognize Amit’s appointment as lawful ever since he was ordered to hold a vote in the Judicial Selection Committee to elect a president in January 2025, which resulted in Amit’s election.

The justice minister refused to convene the Judicial Selection Committee for 16 months starting in October 2023 in order to prevent the election of Amit as Supreme Court president, since Levin did not have a majority on the committee to appoint his preferred, conservative candidate, and opposed Amit, a relative liberal.

Levin’s position was just one component of his judicial overhaul campaign to assert greater government control over the judiciary, and specifically in this case his desire to overturn the tradition of seniority whereby the justice with the most years on the Supreme Court is the only nominee for court president.

Levin sought to have the president elected by majority vote instead, but when legislation he advanced in Knesset to drastically change the composition of the Judicial Selection Committee in favor of the government was frozen, and when the government-backed candidate in the Israel Bar Association elections lost, the justice minister was left without a majority on the committee.

Levin therefore refused to convene the committee, claiming that during a time of war there should be unanimity for the election of president, even though he had sought to overturn the seniority tradition even before the events of October 7, 2023, and the subsequent conflict.

But in January 2025, the High Court finally ordered Levin to convene the committee and hold a vote, ruling that indefinitely refusing to appoint the president on the grounds of unanimity granted the justice minister veto power over the appointment, which the law never intended to provide.

Levin grudgingly convened the committee after much foot-dragging, but nevertheless boycotted the session in which Amit was elected president along with his two coalition colleagues on the panel.

The justice minister has since `refused to recognize Amit as president, to complete the procedural steps confirming and announcing his appointment, and has refused to cooperate with him in order to make senior judicial appointments requiring both their signatures.

In response to the Movement for Quality Government’s petition against his position, Levin argued in court that since he never counter-signed the appointment order for Amit together with President Isaac Herzog, or published Amit’s appointment in the state gazette, Amit was not lawfully the court president.

He asserted in court that he therefore had no obligation to cooperate with Amit to make the senior judicial appointments.

The High Court ruled on Sunday, however, that Amit’s appointment was lawful and that countersigning the appointment order and publishing the appointment in the state gazette were merely formalistic steps with no bearing on the appointment process.

The court also stated in a sharply written opinion that Levin’s arguments were fundamentally invalid and should not have been made in court, since Levin himself was the one blocking the procedural steps for the announcement of Amit’s appointment, which Levin claimed were the obstacle to recognizing the 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.