With no one willing to openly negotiate from the opposition, the coalition, on Sunday evening, decided to introduce some compromise proposals for the judicial reform.
Constitution, Law and Justice Committee Chairman MK Simcha Rothman has offered to change the structure and proposal for selecting Supreme Court justices.
In Rothman’s new compromise proposal, the selection committee would be comprised as follows:
3 Coalition Ministers
3 Coalition MKs
3 Judges
2 Opposition MKs
For each Knesset, the first 2 Supreme Court judicial appointments will be by straight majority (6 out of 11). [Updated] The third judicial appointment will need approval of an Opposition MK. The fourth judicial appointment and on will require approval of 1 judge and 1 opposition MK.
For District, Magistrate and Labor court judicial appointments, the vote will need approval of 7 of the 11 committee members. For District and Magistrate appointments, two of the Supreme Court judges on the committee will be replaced by a District and Magistrate court presidents. For the Labor Court appointments, a Labor court president will replace the Magistrate judge.
Other parts of the proposal require that at least 1 member from each section (Ministers, MKs, Judges, Opposition) be a woman. The coalition ministers and MKs need to be from different parties within the coalition.
The net result is that each coalition will have the initial opportunity to appoint two ideological judges to the court, but subsequent to that, the justices will need to be compromise judges that everyone can agree on.
Removal of a judge will require 9 members.
This provides a solution to the worries of the opposition that they will never again have a say again in the makeup of the Supreme Court, since voting patterns in Israel (for now) have shifted rightward.
And when the coalition eventually does go into the opposition, and the court’s representatives are still leftwing, the right will have still have some say in the court’s composition after the first two appointments.
