The Judicial Selection Committee is set to convene on Sunday for the first time in a year and a half to deliberate on judicial appointments, following Justice Minister Yariv Levin’s 18-month refusal to convene the key panel.

The committee hearing will consider the appointment of judges to magistrates’ courts, traffic courts, and family courts in the northern and southern districts.

Levin has refused to convene the Judicial Selection Committee since January 2025, seemingly because he does not have a majority on the nine-member panel to ensure his preferred candidates get selected and because new legislation radically changing the judicial appointments process will come into effect after the upcoming election.

As a result, there are currently 51 vacancies on the country’s various magistrate and district courts, a number that will rise to 67 by the end of the year.

Due to legal pressure on Levin through petitions to the High Court, he published the names of judicial candidates for courts in the northern and southern district during the course of May, a key step before holding appointment hearings.

On May 31, the High Court ordered Levin explicitly to “take the necessary steps” to appoint district court judges as well, specifying the Haifa and Beersheba district courts in particular where there is an acute lack of judges, and ordered him to publish candidates’ names by June 8.

Israel Courts Administration Director Judge Tzachi Ouziel, not Levin, then published a list of candidates for the Haifa and Beersheba District Courts in the state gazette on June 5.

The notice did not, however, give a date on which the nominees would be debated, unlike the........

© The Times of Israel