The Levin reform for the selection of judges is indeed catastrophic. Correctly it has been stated that if it goes through, the government will acquire total control over the judiciary, eliminating the separation of powers doctrine upon which liberal democracies lie their foundations. Yet, it is true that the existent condition where judges had the majority in the relevant appointments committee, created a situation where the judicial establishment could favor its own preferred candidates based on ideological alignment criteria. The Levin reform should not be criticized for trying to break this judicial monopoly, but because it does so by replacing it with another monopoly, that of the politicians.
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It is by no accident that in the United Kingdom, the cradle of common law from which Israeli law is largely influenced due to the Mandate, no politicians are members of the Judicial Appointments Commission. If Israel cannot do the same, maybe it is time for it to completely change route on the subject and start appointing judges as other European countries in continental Europe do, through the establishment of a National Judicial Academy.
Such an academy exists in Spain, France, Italy, and Greece among others. Candidates who want to become judges are called to take national exams on law subjects after having already obtained their law degrees and acquired practical experience as lawyers. The best of them in numbers already pre-set each year by the government, get accepted to the Academy where other judges and law professors train them for a period of 2 years.
Courses include not only theoretical ones but also practice in courts as well as the teaching of a foreign language. Other courses, such as on judicial psychology, can also be added so that after the culmination of these 2 years, the candidate has acquired not only a spherical knowledge of issues beyond law but also practical skills on how to distribute justice. Following their success in exams taken after the culmination of their Academy studies, the candidates are then sworn in as Judges. Through this process, politicization issues are avoided or at least diminished. It is one thing to have a committee evaluating candidates based on their route and another thing for examiners to grade the candidates' exam papers.
It is true that the establishment of a National Judicial Academy in Israel will necessitate true reform in the country's legal system. Europe's continental law countries with such an Academy have also a system where there are two different supreme courts-one for public law and one for private law matters including criminal law. Moreover, these supreme courts comprise more than 50 judges.
In Israel, where the Supreme Court comprises 11 judges and is responsible to decide on all kinds of cases from administrative measures to cases involving property law or criminal offenses, some will hail as impossible the introduction of the European continental law model. As said once to me by a former president of the Israeli Supreme Court – "this is nice, but it is not our system."
Yet, this is exactly the root of the problem. The common law paradigm of judge selections, inherited from the United Kingdom due to the Mandate, is not suitable for Israel. It creates only politicization claims on whether judges or politicians should govern the judiciary when the answer should be neither of them. Unless we radically change the system, thinking out of the box, in this era of global populism, there will be always governments that will seek to reform it in a clumsy, unprofessional, and even undemocratic way. Even if the Levin reform is currently thwarted, another one will come in the future.
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