Background
The petitioners — attorneys practicing before the Jerusalem Shari’a Regional Court — filed this petition in August 2025 challenging the Minister of Justice’s prolonged failure to convene the Qadi Selection Committee. Four new qadi positions for the Jerusalem Shari’a Court had been approved in 2021, and examination proceedings concluded in 2022, yet the appointments were never completed. During this period one of the court’s two sitting qadis retired, leaving the court effectively with a single judge and generating severe backlogs that directly prejudiced litigants’ rights.
The petitioners alleged that the minister responsible for powers under the Qadis Law, 5721-1961 had simply refused to convene the committee despite repeated requests, and they sought an order compelling immediate convening. A secondary remedy sought was the appointment of five legal assistants to support the Jerusalem Shari’a Court.
The respondents filed their preliminary response only on February 19, 2026 — shortly before the scheduled hearing — announcing that the minister had decided to convene the committee, which had already met on February 17, 2026. Subsequent updates disclosed that on May 20, 2026 the committee convened and selected four new qadis for Jerusalem, with a fifth position still under consideration. A state-of-emergency declaration arising from “Operation Lion’s Roar” had in the interim caused the hearing to be postponed to June 1, 2026, before ultimately being cancelled as the matter was resolved.
The Court’s Holding
The three-judge panel (Justices Grosskopf, Stein, and Kabub) ordered the petition dismissed as moot. The principal relief sought — convening the committee and appointing qadis — had been achieved: four qadis were selected by the committee, and the fifth position remained in process. The court expressed unambiguous approval of this outcome but noted that the approximately four-year delay in convening the committee had directly harmed the public it was meant to serve.
The court declined to address the secondary remedy of appointing five legal assistants, agreeing with the respondents that this claim had been raised only in a marginal and general manner without adequate factual or legal foundation — citing the principle, applied in recent HCJ precedents, that peripheral claims lacking evidentiary support will not be entertained.
On costs, the court ordered the respondents to pay the petitioners NIS 15,000. In fixing that sum, the court weighed the very lengthy period during which the committee was not convened, the only partial explanations offered for the delay, and — on the other side — the early procedural stage at which the matter was resolved and the respondents’ willingness to complete the process quickly once the committee was finally convened.
Key Takeaways
- A government minister’s prolonged failure to convene a statutory judicial-selection committee can be successfully challenged by mandamus petition before the HCJ, and the filing of such a petition may itself be the catalyst for action.
- When the primary relief is obtained during litigation, the petition will be dismissed as moot, but costs may still be awarded against the State where the delay was substantial and the explanations were only partially satisfactory.
- Ancillary remedies raised without adequate factual and legal foundation — even in a petition that otherwise succeeds — will not be granted by the HCJ.
- The court signalled concern about the systemic harm caused by leaving judicial positions unfilled for extended periods, cross-referencing a contemporaneous HCJ ruling (HCJ 79117-07-25, decided May 31, 2026) on the same theme.
Why It Matters
This decision reinforces the HCJ’s supervisory role over the executive’s duty to fill judicial vacancies in Israel’s religious court system. The four-year gap in the Qadi Selection Committee’s operation left the Jerusalem Shari’a Court functionally understaffed, undermining access to justice for Muslim litigants in family-law and personal-status matters that fall within the court’s exclusive jurisdiction. The ruling confirms that deliberate or negligent inaction in convening statutory appointment bodies is judicially reviewable and will attract costs even when the petition is technically moot by the time of decision.
More broadly, the case illustrates the tension between ministerial discretion in scheduling administrative processes and the constitutional obligation to maintain a functioning judiciary. By awarding costs despite dismissing the petition, the court sent a clear signal that the State cannot avoid accountability for administrative delay simply by acting belatedly — a message consistent with a line of recent HCJ decisions on judicial-vacancy management.