Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked has a unique advantage over many of her predecessors. She didn't come from the juridical world and was never part of a legal training process that has been besieged and molded over many long years by jurists of a particular lineage โ the same lineage from which Supreme Court justices and senior officials in government, academia and research centers are customarily chosen.
Even ahead of the Knesset debate on the manner in which attorneys general are appointed to government ministries, retired judges were already boiling over. The purpose of the initiative is to implement regulation whereby appointments are made via a search committee, which would submit a list of candidates to a minister, including external candidates. From that list, the minister will select a candidate; one who is also agreeable to the chief attorney general. Those who oppose the proposal argue that it politicizes the appointments. A senior retired justice described it to local media outlets as an attempt by ministers to appoint "our people."
For ministers, "our people" is invalid; but for judges and their minions in the legal system, "our people" is completely kosher. It thus shouldn't come as a surprise when Deputy Attorney General Dina Zilber makes a distinction between jurists who serve as consiglieres for ministers โ a term lifted from the world of the Italian mafia โ and those who serve the public interest. Anyone who wants to scrutinize and challenge the accepted norms of the judicial institution is instantaneously labeled a heretic, a public enemy and a danger to democracy.
The implicit โ and to some degree explicit โ assumption of those who oppose any change is that government ministers are merely politicos seeking to advance their own private interests. The ministers, in the opinion of the objectors, are limited in their ability to define public interest and need the attorneys general, who heed the tenets of the judicial establishment, to guide them.
The time has come for people in the judicial system to understand that in order to successfully serve the public, ministers need jurists who believe in the policies of that particular minister and will help facilitate their implementation. Attorneys general aren't supposed to be contrarian to the minister with whom they work. Attorneys general have become representatives of the High Court of Justice within government ministries, instead of competent and proficient representatives of the government facing the High Court. On occasion, the legal system also needs to set a new course.
