Petition: High Court Judges Must Forfeit State Salary; They Rule On Cases Where State A Party

They draw a salary far in excess of the median national monthly salary for full-time employees.

Jerusalem, April 18 – As controversy swirls around the role of the judiciary in Israel and its relationship with the legislative branch of government, a group of NGOs has submitted a petition to the High Court of Justice urging its members to forgo their monthly wages, since accepting such funds from the State creates the appearance of impropriety when the court adjudicates cases in which the State is a party.

A consortium of six legal organizations and several former Members of Knesset argued in their document that when sitting judges issue rulings for or against the State, as happens multiple times each month, they raise questions as to the purity of legal reasoning that goes into those decisions, since each judge draws a handsome salary and a lifetime guaranteed pension from the coffers of the selfsame State. While under normal circumstances a judge is expected to recuse himself or herself from presiding over a case in which he or she has an interest or a connection to any of the parties involved, such an arrangement is impossible for cases involving the State, since all judges are paid by the State. The only solution, claims the petition, is for judges not to be paid.

“While any judge might claim not to be affected by payments or services received from a party to a case, the practice is not to accept such claims,” read the petition. “The Court ought to make no exceptions to this principle of jurisprudential ethics, and immediately bar its members from accepting a salary from the State of Israel. Continuing to draw a salary far in excess of the median national monthly salary for full-time employees creates the impression of assumed prejudice.”

“Arguments that in fact the Court has ruled against the State numerous times fail to allay the ethical concerns,” the document continued. “In fact it would appear to an unbiased observer, which the judges can no longer claim to be, that the Court has in many cases attempted to overcompensate for its appearance of impropriety by adopting a prejudice in the opposite direction, and issuing rulings that stymie the State from conducting the governance with which it is charged by the electorate – rulings that under sober, objective analysis would not have been issued. The result has been a travesty of justice and a distortion of the law no less egregious than ruling consistently in the State’s favor.”

Experts doubt the petition will succeed. “It’ll never work,” predicted Israel Bar Association President Eli Tiszt. “Now, if the petition had suggested that only a more generous payment package would render judges more capable of resisting the pull of bribery, they would probably get behind that.”

Please support our work through Patreon.