Background
Six petitions, all filed in March 2025, were consolidated before an eleven-justice full bench of the Supreme Court. The petitioners include the Movement for Quality Government in Israel, the Israeli Democracy Guard, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, opposition Members of Knesset Karin Elharrar and Yoav Seglovitch, the Israel Bar Association, and various private individuals. The respondents include the Knesset, the Knesset’s Constitution, Law and Justice Committee and its chair MK Simcha Rothman, the Minister of Justice, the Government of Israel, the Attorney General (Legal Advisor to the Government), and the courts administration. The petitions challenge legislative action by the Knesset, and the court had previously issued a conditional order (צו על-תנאי) whose conversion to an absolute order was the subject of the upcoming hearing.
A hearing on whether to make the conditional order absolute was scheduled for 21 June 2026. In advance of that hearing, media organizations requested permission to broadcast the proceedings live. No party to the litigation objected. In a prior related decision dated 10 June 2026, the court had already addressed preliminary matters, laying the groundwork for the June 21 proceeding.
The Court’s Holding
Acting under Section 70(b) of the Courts Law [Consolidated Version], 1984, and noting the absence of objection from any party, the full bench unanimously ordered that the 21 June 2026 hearing be filmed and broadcast live via the Government Press Office. This procedural decision was signed by all eleven justices: President Yitzhak Amit, Deputy President Noam Sohlberg, and Justices Dafna Barak-Erez, David Mintz, Yael Willner, Ofer Grosskopf, Alex Stein, Gila Canfy-Steinitz, Khaled Kabub, Yechiel Kasher, and Ruth Ronen.
The court also set a detailed timetable for the hearing. Respondents (Knesset counsel, Government counsel, and the Attorney General) were each allocated up to 60 minutes. Petitioners across the six cases were allocated up to 20 minutes each, heard in a specified sequence. Knesset and Government counsel were permitted a brief reply of up to 15 minutes each. The court stressed strict adherence to the schedule and prohibited repetition of arguments already made by other parties.
Key Takeaways
- The Supreme Court exercised its authority under Section 70(b) of the Courts Law to order live broadcast of high-profile constitutional proceedings — the first or among the first times this has been done for a full-bench hearing of this nature.
- All eleven justices participated in the decision, signalling the court’s treatment of the consolidated petitions as a matter of the highest constitutional importance.
- The structured timetable — 60 minutes per respondent, 20 minutes per petitioner, with no repetition permitted — reflects the court’s effort to manage six overlapping petitions efficiently without sacrificing each party’s right to be heard.
- The hearing concerned whether a conditional order (interim injunctive relief) issued earlier in the proceedings should be converted into an absolute order — a consequential threshold question on the merits of the challenge to the Knesset legislation at issue.
Why It Matters
This decision is significant both procedurally and symbolically. The live broadcast of a full eleven-justice bench hearing marks a transparency milestone for Israel’s Supreme Court and ensures that proceedings on a major constitutional dispute are accessible to the public in real time. The involvement of the Movement for Quality Government, civil liberties organizations, the Bar Association, and opposition legislators — arrayed against the Knesset, its Constitution Committee, the Government, and the Attorney General — signals that the underlying petitions raise fundamental questions about the limits of parliamentary power and the protection of constitutional rights.
The June 21 hearing on converting the conditional order to absolute is a critical juncture: an absolute order would impose binding legal obligations on the respondents pending full resolution of the petitions. The court’s willingness to broadcast the hearing and to convene all eleven justices underscores the broader public and legal stakes of the litigation.