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12 IJCA 1 (2021)
Ministerial Emergency Powers over Court Administration in the Israeli Judiciary

handle is hein.journals/ijca12 and id is 205 raw text is: Guy Lurie, 'Ministerial Emergency Powers Over International Journal Court Administration in the Israeli Judiciary' (2021) For Court Administration ?12(2) International Journal for Court Administration 8. DOI: https://do.org/10.36745/ijca.383 ACADEMIC ARTICLE Ministerial Emergency Powers Over Court Administration in the Israeli Judiciary Guy Lurie* This article focuses on the administration of courts in Israel during the Coronavi- rus Pandemic, and particularly on the emergency powers utilized by the Minister of Justice. The article points out that more attention must be granted to the confluence of two issues: emergency powers and court administration. While the literature on emergency powers has discussed at length the challenges inherent in maintaining the rule of law under extreme conditions, the literature on court administration has not shown as clear an awareness of the issue, even though it has extensively discussed the tensions intrinsic to executive control over court administration. This article points out, drawing on both of these theoretical dis- courses, that we must carefully structure emergency powers over the administra- tion of courts taking care to maintain the realization of the principles of judicial independence and judicial accountability, which in emergencies necessitates a clear separation of the power to declare a state of emergency from the power to cur- tail court operations due to the emergency. Furthermore, we must also maintain transparency in the realization of these principles, which is almost as important as their actual realization in order to maintain public confidence in the courts. Keywords: Covid19 Pandemic; Israel; Emergency Powers; Minister of Justice; Public Confidence 1. Introduction In the small hours of the night between March 14 and 15, 2020, as part of sweeping meas- ures enacted to combat the spread of Covid-19, the Minister of Justice of Israel Amir Ohana decreed the partial closure of the courts.1 Since this decision instigated the postponement of the opening of the trial of Prime Minister Netanyahu, who was charged with corruption, the parliamentary opposition reacted furiously. A member of Knesset (Israel's Parliament) Ofer Cassif went so far as to say that the Minister's measure was an attempted coup by the Prime Minister, and called upon the courts not to follow this illegal decree.2 Months later, when Israel went through a second lockdown on account of the pandemic, the newly appointed * Senior Researcher at the Israel Democracy Institute, IL. E-mail. Guyl3@idi.org.il. Announcement in the Official Gazette 8744 (15 March 2020). 2 MK Ofer Cassifs Twitter Account <https://twitter.com/ofercass/status/1238968242011594752> [accessed 7 December 2020]. Unless otherwise noted, all translations from Hebrew in this Article are my own.