Background
Yosef Bornstein, acting without counsel, asked the Supreme Court to prohibit publication of his name and identifying details in its February 4, 2026 decision denying his application for a retrial. He argued that publication harmed his privacy, family, reputation, and rehabilitation prospects. He also said that an opposing party had used the decision against him in another judicial proceeding, portraying him negatively and causing concrete harm.
Bornstein further asserted that Israel’s President had granted him a pardon on July 9, 2026 concerning the conviction underlying his retrial application. He contended that the resulting deletion of the relevant criminal-record entry under the Criminal Information and Rehabilitation of Offenders Law, 2019, supported removing his name from the decision. The State opposed the request, arguing that he had not shown the serious and exceptional privacy injury required to overcome the general rule that judicial proceedings and the identities of litigants are public.
The Court’s Holding
Justice Yael Willner denied the request. The Court held that Bornstein had not established the “serious invasion of privacy” required by section 70(d) of the Courts Law to justify departing from the constitutional principle of open justice. Reputational, familial, professional, and rehabilitative harm ordinarily associated with publication of a criminal conviction is insufficient; the applicant must demonstrate harm of exceptional severity. Neither the alleged effects of publication nor the decision’s use in another proceeding met that standard.
The Court also held that a presidential pardon and the consequent deletion of a criminal-record entry do not erase judicial decisions relating to the pardoned conviction and do not, without more, justify restricting their publication. In any event, anonymizing only the retrial decision would be futile because Bornstein’s name and conviction details already appeared in publicly available decisions from three earlier proceedings: his sentencing, his appeal to the District Court, and his application to the Supreme Court for leave to appeal. He did not identify any distinct harm caused specifically by the retrial decision.
Key Takeaways
- A litigant seeking anonymity under section 70(d) of the Courts Law must show an exceptionally severe privacy injury, not merely the ordinary consequences of publicizing a criminal conviction.
- A presidential pardon and deletion of a criminal-record entry do not erase published judicial decisions or automatically overcome the principle of open justice.
- A publication restriction may be denied as ineffective when the same identity and conviction details already appear in other publicly accessible judicial decisions.
Why It Matters
The decision draws a firm distinction between the rehabilitation effects of a pardon or criminal-record deletion and the continued public availability of judicial decisions. It confirms that those measures do not create a general right to have a person’s name removed from the published case law.
For practitioners, the ruling also shows that courts will assess both the severity of the claimed privacy harm and whether the requested restriction could meaningfully alleviate it, particularly when equivalent information is already public through earlier proceedings.