A judicial reform is on the horizon. Not here, in Israel, but in America. The Washington Post reported this week that President Joe Biden intends to implement a reform in the U.S. Supreme Court, and he declared this in a conversation with legislators from the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

The steps Biden is currently considering include imposing a term limit on judges, who are currently appointed for life, mandatory conduct rules for Supreme Court justices, and possibly even increasing the number of justices on the Supreme Court. Such a move would allow him to immediately and artificially change the balance between conservatives and progressives in the court.

To Israeli ears, Biden's reform may not sound particularly dramatic. In the United States, where the Supreme Court operates according to a tradition over 200 years old, these steps are revolutionary. Biden himself opposed such initiatives out of concern that they would allow any future president to do as they wish with the Supreme Court. However, two rulings by the American Supreme Court, one recently and the other about two years ago, completely changed the Democratic Party's attitude toward this judicial body, consequently bringing a shift in Biden's personal stance.

The the Roe v. Wade overturn given in June 2022, determined that the Constitution does not protect women's right to abortion, allowing each state in the U.S. to decide whether and how to permit abortions within its territory. The ruling caused a political earthquake, as the left saw it as a result of reactionary forces taking over the Supreme Court and abusing the judicial system to drag the U.S. back decades.

The second, more recent ruling, was issued about two weeks ago and dealt with the extent of immunity that should be granted to the President of the United States. According to the ruling, substantive immunity applies to all actions of the president in their official capacity but does not protect their private actions. The decision was published as part of a legal proceeding against former President and current Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump regarding his role in the January 6, 2021, Capitol riots. The cumulative punishment for the four charges against him is 55 years in prison. In response to the charges, Trump claimed that the actions were carried out while he was president, and therefore he is entitled to immunity from prosecution. The federal appeals court rejected the immunity claim, but the Supreme Court partially accepted Trump's appeal. Now the case will return to the trial court, which will have to decide whether each charge falls under presidential immunity.

Although the full implications of the ruling are not yet clear, among Trump's opponents, it is considered an attack on the democratic principles of the United States. "This nation was founded on the principle that there are no kings in America," President Biden declared immediately after the ruling was issued. "Each of us is equal before the law. No one - no one - is above the law, not even the president of the United States." Politicians and legal experts joined the attack, vehemently criticizing the ruling and marking it as a sign that a reform in the Supreme Court is necessary.

It turns out that the progressive public's traditional support in the U.S. for the judicial system in general, and the Supreme Court in particular, was conditional. These two rulings, along with other rulings in recent years that did not receive much attention, were made by the majority of the six conservative justices on the Supreme Court, some of whom were appointed by Trump himself, versus the three liberal justices. For more than a generation, the liberal wing almost entirely dominated the Supreme Court, and therefore the immense power given to the court seemed completely logical and even desirable to progressives. Any initiative to change the rules of the game was considered heresy. Once the balance shifted and the conservative majority in the court became solidified, the institution lost favor in the eyes of progressives. Today, calls for judicial reform have become mainstream among them.

Biden's chances of succeeding in initiating such a reform before the elections are slim to none, given that the Republicans hold a majority, even if small, in the House of Representatives. But merely bringing the issue to the forefront and likely positioning it as a key point in Biden's election campaign is very important. Any comparison to what is happening in Israel is at your own risk.

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The Supreme Court has stopped a major push by the Biden administration to boost the nation's COVID-19 vaccination rate, a requirement that employees at large businesses get a vaccine or test regularly and wear a mask on the job.

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At the same time, the court is allowing the administration to proceed with a vaccine mandate for most healthcare workers in the US. The court's orders Thursday came during a spike in coronavirus cases caused by the omicron variant.

The court's conservative majority concluded the administration overstepped its authority by seeking to impose the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's vaccine-or-test rule on US businesses with at least 100 employees. More than 80 million people would have been affected and OSHA had estimated that the rule would save 6,500 lives and prevent 250,000 hospitalizations over six months.

"OSHA has never before imposed such a mandate. Nor has Congress. Indeed, although Congress has enacted significant legislation addressing the COVID–19 pandemic, it has declined to enact any measure similar to what OSHA has promulgated here," the conservatives wrote in an unsigned opinion.

In dissent, the court's three liberals argued that it was the court that was overreaching by substituting its judgment for that of health experts. "Acting outside of its competence and without legal basis, the Court displaces the judgments of the Government officials given the responsibility to respond to workplace health emergencies," Justices Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor wrote in a joint dissent.

US President Joe Biden said he was "disappointed that the Supreme Court has chosen to block common-sense life-saving requirements for employees at large businesses that were grounded squarely in both science and the law."

Biden called on businesses to institute their own vaccination requirements, noting that a third of Fortune 100 companies already have done so.

When crafting the OSHA rule, White House officials always anticipated legal challenges – and  privately some harbored doubts that it could withstand them. The administration nonetheless still views the rule as a success at already driving millions of people to get vaccinated and encouraging private businesses to implement their own requirements that are unaffected by the legal challenge.

The OSHA regulation had initially been blocked by a federal appeals court in New Orleans, then allowed to take effect by a federal appellate panel in Cincinnati.

Both rules had been challenged by Republican-led states. In addition, business groups attacked the OSHA emergency regulation as too expensive and likely to cause workers to leave their jobs at a time when finding new employees already is difficult.

The National Retail Federation, the nation's largest retail trade group, called the Supreme Court's decision "a significant victory for employers."The vaccine mandate that the court will allow to be enforced nationwide scraped by on a 5-4 vote, with Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh joining the liberals to form a majority. The mandate covers virtually all health care workers in the country, applying to providers that receive federal Medicare or Medicaid funding. It affects 10.4 million workers at 76,000 health care facilities as well as home health care providers. The rule has medical and religious exemptions.

Biden said that decision by the court "will save lives."

In an unsigned opinion, the court wrote: "The challenges posed by a global pandemic do not allow a federal agency to exercise power that Congress has not conferred upon it. At the same time, such unprecedented circumstances provide no grounds for limiting the exercise of authorities the agency has long been recognized to have." It said the "latter principle governs" in the healthcare arena.

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Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in dissent that the case was about whether the administration has the authority "to force healthcare workers, by coercing their employers, to undergo a medical procedure they do not want and cannot undo." He said the administration hadn't shown convincingly that Congress gave it that authority.

Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett signed onto Thomas' opinion. Alito wrote a separate dissent that the other three conservatives also joined.

Decisions by federal appeals courts in New Orleans and St. Louis had blocked the mandate in about half the states. The administration already was taking steps to enforce it elsewhere.

More than 208 million Americans, 62.7% of the population, are fully vaccinated, and more than a third of those have received booster shots, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. All nine justices have gotten booster shots.

The courthouse remains closed to the public, and lawyers and reporters are asked for negative test results before being allowed inside the courtroom for arguments, though vaccinations are not required.

The justices heard arguments on the challenges last week. Their questions then hinted at the split verdict that they issued Thursday.

A separate vaccine mandate for federal contractors, on hold after lower courts blocked it, has not been considered by the Supreme Court.

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A number of Jewish organizations have submitted a friend-of-the-court brief last week asking for the US Supreme Court to review a case involving a British bank accused of helping fund Hamas terrorist in activity in Israel during the Second Intifada.

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The brief was submitted in the case of Weiss v. National Westminster Bank, representing 200 Americans victims of Hamas terrorism during the intifada that lasted from September 2000 to February 2005.

The brief, which was filed by Justin Danilewitz of the Philadelphia-based Saul Ewing Arnstein & Lehr LLP, was joined by 10 Jewish organizations, including the Lawfare Project, Agudath Israel of America, the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, Anti-Defamation League, American Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists, StandWithUs, Zachor Legal Institute, Jerusalem Institute of Justice and the Israeli-American Civic Action Network.

It calls into question an April decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit that dismissed the case, claiming that Interpal had carried out some charitable work; that the money channeled through National Westminster Bank (NatWest) was not specifically for terrorist attacks or to recruit terrorists to carry out attacks; and that Interpal did not indicate to NatWest that the transfers were for terrorist purposes.

This decision led the plaintiffs to appeal to the Supreme Court to clarify how courts should apply liability under the Anti-Terrorist Act (ATA), passed by Congress in 2001 and the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA), passed in 2016 to strengthen the ATA and which imposes civil liability on anybody who "aids and abets" an act of international terrorism.

"The Supreme Court has previously underscored that terrorist organizations don't maintain legitimate financial firewalls between the funds they raise for civil, nonviolent activities and those ultimately used to support violent, terrorist operations, but the federal courts of appeal have not taken a uniform approach to this issue, and the Supreme Court hasn't yet clarified the scope of civil liability," said Gary Osen, managing partner of Osen LLC, which represents one of the plaintiffs, in a news release on Thursday.

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The circuit court's decision went against its own previous ruling in 2014, which held that there was sufficient evidence from which a jury can conclude that "NatWest had knowledge that, or exhibited deliberate indifference to whether Interpal provided material support to a terrorist organization."

'Letting decision stand would create loophole in laws'

The lawsuit against NatWest was first filed in 2005 under the Anti-Terrorism Act, made up of claims from estates and family members of American citizens who were killed or injured in terrorist attacks by Hamas. The plaintiffs alleged that NatWest held accounts for Interpal – a United Kingdom-based organization that describes itself as a charity, but was later designated as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist organization by the US government.

The U. Treasury Department has previously called Interpal a fundraising organization of Hamas.

From December 2001 to January 2004, according to the plaintiffs, NatWest was accused of transferring millions of dollars to Hamas-controlled entities on behalf of Interpal during the Second Intifada, which saw waves of suicide and other terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians by Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist organizations.

"We are confident that the Supreme Court will hear this case and reverse the Second Circuit. As the Supreme Court has already recognized, terrorist organizations are so tainted by their criminal conduct that any contribution to such an organization facilitates that conduct," wrote Gerard Filitti, senior counsel at the Lawfare Project in an email. "Letting this decision stand would create a significant loophole in anti-terrorism laws, allowing terrorist organizations to raise money simply by creating nominally 'charitable' arms."

Another friend-of-the-court brief supporting a Supreme Court review of the case was submitted on Oct. 8 by 10 US senators, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Bob Menendez (D-NJ), Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Rob Portman (R-Ohio), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), James Inhofe (R-Okla.) and Benjamin Cardin (D-Md.).

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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The US Supreme Court on Wednesday delivered a setback to a bid by the heirs of Jewish art dealers to win restitution from Germany in American courts for what they called a coerced sale forced by the former Nazi government in 1935 of a collection of precious medieval religious art.

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The justices in a 9-0 ruling decided that the lawsuit cannot proceed under a US law called the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act that limits the jurisdiction of American courts in claims against foreign governments. They threw out a lower court's decision that had let the lawsuit move forward in federal court in Washington.

But while the justices decided that this law barred the claims that the heirs brought against a German agency that administers state museums, they directed lower courts to re-examine other arguments made in the case, meaning the lawsuit potentially could still proceed.

The justices on Wednesday also threw out a separate lower court ruling that had allowed a similar lawsuit to proceed against Hungary that sought restitution for Jewish people whose property was forcibly taken as part of that nation's collaboration with its Nazi allies during World War II.

In a statement, Wednesday, the Holocaust Survivors Foundation USA said, "As Holocaust survivors, we are profoundly disappointed."

It said, "The Holocaust is not an abstraction – it was real and remains so for survivors and our families. In light of today's disappointing Supreme Court rulings, the survivor community calls on Congress to immediately enact, and the Biden Administration to support, legislation to establish a clear path in US courts for Holocaust survivors and victims' heirs to pursue remedies for genocidal thefts of assets such as artworks, insurance policies, and other property losses, when the victims, property, or culprits have a connection to the United States."

The American Jewish Committee said it regretted the Supreme Court ruling.

It noted Germany's Limbach Commission, which handles forced sales and seizures of art under the Nazi's, and attorneys for the German government "maintained before the Supreme Court that the 1935 sale of the artwork was free and uncoerced, despite the longstanding principle in Holocaust asset matters that any sale occurring after 1933, when the Nazis came to power, should be considered a forced sale. The attorneys for Germany further argued that the looting of Jewish property should not be considered as a part of the genocide of Jews, another principle that until now has governed Germany policy on Holocaust restitution matters."

The German case concerns a collection of ecclesiastical relics known as the Welfenschatz that was sold by the Jewish art dealers. The collection, dating primarily from the 11th to 15th centuries, includes gilded crosses and busts of saints. Pieces from the collection are on display at a museum in Berlin.

The heirs sued Germany and the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, which oversees museums in Berlin, in 2015 in US federal court, seeking the collection's return or $250 million. The plaintiffs said the 1935 sale was a vastly undervalued "sham transaction" made under duress by Jewish victims of Nazi persecution in the years before World War II.

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Wednesday's ruling rejected the argument by the heirs that Germany was not immune from their lawsuit under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act because the coerced sale was an act of genocide, in violation of international law.

Writing for the court, Chief Justice John Roberts said that law does not cover what a foreign country does to property belonging to its own citizens within its own borders.

"As a nation, we would be surprised - and might even initiate reciprocal action – if a court in Germany adjudicated claims by Americans that they were entitled to hundreds of millions of dollars because of human rights violations committed by the United States government years ago," Roberts wrote.

"There is no reason to anticipate that Germany's reaction would be any different were American courts to exercise the jurisdiction claimed in this case," Roberts added.

The Prussian foundation's own investigation found that the sale was a "voluntary, fair-market transaction," and a German commission that looks into Nazi-looted art agreed that it was not made under duress and the price reflected the Great Depression's effect on the art market.

A federal judge in Washington ruled against Germany in 2017. The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit narrowed the case the following year, saying claims could proceed against the foundation but not against Germany's government itself.

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Jed Leiber was an adult before he learned that his family was once part-owner of a collection of centuries-old religious artworks now said to be worth at least $250 million.

Over a steak dinner at a New York City restaurant in the 1990s, he had asked his mother about his grandfather, a prominent art dealer who fled Germany after Adolf Hitler came to power. "What was grandpa most proud of in his business?" he asked.

"He was very, very proud to have acquired the Guelph Treasure, and then was forced to sell it to the Nazis," she told him.

That conversation set Leiber, of West Hollywood, California, on a decadeslong mission to reclaim some 40 pieces of the Guelph Treasure on display in a Berlin museum. It's a pursuit that has now landed him at the US Supreme Court, in a case to be argued Monday.

For centuries, the collection, called the Welfenschatz in German, was owned by German royalty. It includes elaborate containers used to store Christian relics; small, intricate altars and ornate crosses. Many are silver or gold and decorated with gems.

In 2015, Leiber's quest for the collection led to a lawsuit against Germany and the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation. The state-run foundation owns the collection and runs Berlin's Museum of Decorative Arts, where the collection is housed. Germany and the foundation asked the trial-level court to dismiss the suit, but the court declined. An appeals court also kept the suit alive.

Now, the Supreme Court, which has been hearing arguments by telephone because of the coronavirus pandemic, will weigh in. A separate case involving Hungarian Holocaust victims is being heard the same day.

At this point, the Guelph Treasure case is not about whether Leiber's grandfather and the two other Frankfurt art dealer firms that joined to purchase the collection in 1929 were forced to sell it, a claim Germany and the foundation dispute. It's just about whether Leiber and two other heirs of those dealers, New Mexico resident Alan Philipp and London resident Gerald Stiebel, can continue seeking the objects' return in US courts.

In a statement, Hermann Parzinger, president of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, argued that the suit should be dismissed. The foundation and Germany have the support of US President Donald Trump's administration's on the matter

"Our view is that Germany is the proper jurisdiction for a case which involves a sale of a collection of medieval German art by German art dealers to a German state," Parzinger said.

The suit's claim that the Guelph Treasure was sold under Nazi pressure was also diligently investigated in Germany, he said. The foundation found that the sale was made voluntarily and for fair market value. A German commission dedicated to investigating claims of property stolen by the Nazis agreed.

Parzinger said records "clearly show that there were long and tough negotiations on the price and that the two sides met exactly in the middle of their initial starting prices."

The art dealers' heirs, however, say the purchase price, 4.25 million Reichsmark, was about one-third of what the collection was worth. Under international law principles, sales of property by Jews in Nazi Germany are also presumed to have been done under pressure and therefore invalid, said the heirs' attorney, Nicholas O'Donnell.

Leiber's grandfather, Saemy Rosenberg, and the two other Frankfurt art dealer firms he joined with to purchase the Guelph Treasure did sell other pieces of the collection outside of Germany. But their timing was unfortunate. The Great Depression hit soon after they purchased the collection. Some of the pieces were sold to The Cleveland Museum of Art or private collectors. The Nazi-controlled state of Prussia bought the remaining pieces in 1935. The two sides disagree on whether the collection was ultimately presented to Hitler as a gift.

Leiber says his grandfather never said anything to him about the collection, though the two played chess together on Sundays from the time he was 5 to when he was 11.

"He never spoke of the war. He never spoke of what he lost. He never spoke of the horrors that he and the family experienced. ... I think it was very important to him to keep moving on, to move forward," Leiber said.

Rosenberg reestablished his art business in New York. When he died in 1971, The New York Times called him a "leading international art dealer," noting that his clients had included oil tycoon Paul Getty, CBS Chairman William S. Paley, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

In the nearly 50 years since his grandfather's death, Leiber has had his own star-studded career. In 1992, he founded NightBird Recording Studios at the Sunset Marquis Hotel in West Hollywood, where his clients have included Madonna, U2, Miley Cyrus, and Justin Bieber. He's particularly proud of his work with guitarist Jeff Beck and the late Aretha Franklin. But his grandfather was a singular influence on him.

"He's a super-human figure in my life," Leiber said. "And I decided that I had to do whatever it took to have returned what was taken from him."

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The court upheld an earlier ruling that the painting should be returned to the family of the collector, Jewish businessman Simon Bauer, according to the text seen by AFP on Wednesday.

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Purchasers Bruce and Robbi Toll of the Philadelphia area, who are also Jewish, claimed that they didn't know the painting was stolen when they bought it in New York for $800,000 back in 1995.

The Vichy regime in France during the war collaborated with the Nazis and stole 93 paintings from Bauer, according to the report. Some of the paintings were returned to him after the war, though died in 1947, before he was able to retrieve La Cueillette.

Pissarro was born on Nov. 13, 1903 on St. Thomas in the Caribbean. His father was of Portuguese Jewish descent and held French nationality; his mother was from a French Jewish family from the island of St. Thomas. Few of Pissarro's paintings sold during his lifetime.

In a related development across the Atlantic, the US Supreme Court agreed Thursday to hear a case involving the descendants of a group of Jewish art dealers from Germany who say their ancestors were forced to sell a collection of religious art to the Nazi government in 1935.

The justices will decide whether the dispute involving foreign citizens suing a foreign government belongs in US courts. A lower court allowed the case to go forward, but Germany asked the Supreme Court to weigh in.

The justices also took a case involving Hungarian nationals suing Hungary over property taken from them during World War II.

In the case involving Germany, the group of people who sued are descendants of art dealers who in 1929 together bought a collection of religious artworks from the 11th to 15th centuries known as the Guelph Treasure. The collection is known in German as the Welfenschatz. An appeals court in Washington allowed the case to go forward in 2018.

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In a statement, Nicholas M. O'Donnell, who represents the heirs of the art dealers, said that: "Germany seeks to eliminate recourse for Nazi-looted art and the Court will have the chance to answer this question of critical importance for Holocaust victims."

Jonathan Freiman, one of Germany's lawyers, said in an email: "We're glad that the Supreme Court will hear the case and look forward to explaining why this dispute doesn't belong in a US court."

Part of this article is reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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