Israel Names Four New Supreme Justices
The Judicial Appointments Committee named four new Supreme Court justices on Friday, following a tumultuous week of power struggles and controversy surrounding Israel’s court system.
The newly appointed justices are Jerusalem District Court Judge Noam Sohlberg, dean of Tel Aviv University’s law school Daphne Barak-Erez, Jerusalem District Court Deputy President Zvi Zylbertal, and Tel Aviv District Court Judge Uri Shoham.
All the new justices were voted in unanimously, with the exception of Sohlberg, who was backed by eight of the nine panel members. Shoham was picked to fill in the Supreme Court’s “Mizrahi” slot, in light of recently sounded criticism that the list of possible Supreme Court nominees did not include a judge from Israel’s North-African or Middle Eastern Jewish community.
Sohlberg and Zylbertal’s appointment is to take immediate effect; Shoham will join once current Supreme Court President Dorit Beinisch retires at the end of next month, while Barak-Erez’s appointment will take effect with the exit of the Supreme Court’s Deputy President Eliezer Rivlin in May.
As a result of his relatively young age, Sohlberg, who will turn 50 later this month, is expected to be nominated as Supreme Court President in the distant future.
For more, go to Haaretz.com
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
