Levin and Hayut Meet, But Not to Make Peace

By Yisrael Price

YERUSHALAYIM – Justice Minister Yariv Levin and Chief Justice Esther Hayut held a working meeting on Tuesday, their first sit-down since they traded harsh words in public over Levin’s proposed judicial overhaul.

Although much was made of it in the Israeli media, it was not an attempt to begin a dialogue on the controversy which has rocked the country in recent days.

The two did not discuss the reforms, focusing instead on administrative matters, such as easing the crowding of the legal calendar and a number of measures advanced by Hayut to facilitate the High Court’s service to the public, Ynet reported.

Hayut made an unusually militant speech last Thursday, in which she contended that Levin’s plans to change the balance between the judiciary and the Knesset would deal a “fatal blow” to the country’s democratic identity.

Levin responded by accusing Hayut of setting up a new political party, and said that her speech was evidence that the High Court “has lost its way.”

Meanwhile on Tuesday, former attorney general Yehuda Weinstein kept the flames of controversy burning, telling a Tel Aviv University conference that the government’s judicial makeover plan “is not a reform, it’s a pogrom.”

Weinstein said the new government “is trying to change the justice system we know, and it is all being done hastily and with no consideration. I oppose everything it includes.”

He singled out for approbrium changing the current method of selecting High Court justices and its president, and to allowing ministers to appoint their own legal advisers, and to “everything the justice minister has suggested.”

However, he also said that he could agree to limits on the Court’s ability to strike down laws and even for an override clause to be passed, enabling 64 lawmakers in the 120-member Knesset to nullify rulings.

Meanwhile, the glimmering of a possible path to compromise appeared on Tuesday as Knesset Constitution Committee chairman MK Simcha Rothman (Religious Zionism) prepared to submit his own more moderate version of judicial reform, Channel 12 News reported.

Rothman is expected to present in the next few days a bill that might not do away entirely with the concept of “reasonableness” in court rulings, as Levin’s program would. It would also leave the High Court with more power to override Knesset laws, and give it more of a say in judicial appointments than the Levin proposals, which have also not yet been brought before the Knesset.

Although the attorney general has indicated that the process of formulating her opinion on both Levin’s and Rothman’s bills would consume weeks, Rothman expressed hope, according to sources close to him, that he believes that all the legislative procedures can be completed within a few weeks, and that it would entail compromises to achieve passage.