Language:
Hebrew
Year of publication:
2022
Titel der Quelle:
משפטים
Angaben zur Quelle:
נא,3 (תשפב) 807-841
Keywords:
Israel.
;
Judges Selection and appointment
;
Judicial process
Abstract:
Until recently, a procedure in the Supreme Court of Israelallowed each justice to compose three-justice panels. Thisunique ability of justices to compose panels allows us to testthree theories of panel composition by justices: randomselection, professional selection, and strategic selection. We assembled anoriginal database of decisions made under this procedure during atwo-year period in which the composition of the court remained stable(around 800 court decisions, from January 2015 to April 2017). The datareveal a strong bias in justices’ panel composition. A Gini coefficientmeasuring the extent of inequality in each justice’s panel composition,which ranges from 0 (total equality) to 1 (total inequality), is 0.82 onaverage, which contradicts the random composition theory. The highvariance in the choice of panel members contradicts the professionalcomposition theory. The data support the idea that justices composepanels strategically, and this theory is also supported by several casestudies. Accordingly, the data uncover justices’ revealed preferences forpanel members. We use the data to depict relationships within theSupreme Court of Israel, and identify three groups of justices. We alsoshow that justices who were selected by the current Chief Justice under theabove procedure before she became Chief Justice are more likely to sit on apanel with her in ordinary hearings after she became Chief Justice. Sincethe Chief Justice has the legal authority to compose ordinary panels, this isalso consistent with strategic panel composition. In light of our findings,we conclude by recommending a change in the manner in which panelsare composed on the Supreme Court of Israel. We recommend the use ofcomputer software to compose all judicial panels randomly, and todetermine the identity of the justice on duty who deals with each petition.U
Note:
With an English abstract.
URL:
אתר את הפרסום בקטלוג המאוחד של ספריות ישראל
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