A history of the administration of courts in Israel

ABSTRACT

This article presents the history of the administration of courts in Israel, from 1948 to circa 1995, unearthing a series of tensions that undergirded the management of Israeli courts throughout their history. It illustrates that judiciary-executive tensions, as well as intra-judiciary and other extra-judiciary tensions, informed the trajectory of Israeli court administration. Furthermore, the article singles out two outstanding figures in the history of the Israeli judiciary, chief justices Yitzhak Olshan and Meir Shamgar, whose lesser-known preoccupation with the administration of courts – alongside the work of even lesser-known Israeli jurists who “managed” Israeli courts for decades – is revealed in the article.

KEYWORDS:

• The Israeli judiciary
• Meir Shamgar
• Yizhak Olshan
• the director of courts
• court administration

Introduction

This article is devoted to the history of court administration in Israel, a topic that rarely figures, and is narrowly addressed, in the historical literature. The article’s timeframe spans, roughly, the tenure of the second Israeli chief justice, Yitzhak Olshan (1954–1965),¹ to that of the seventh chief justice, Meir Shamgar (1983–1995).² It will shed light on the lesser-known – often, hitherto completely unknown – side in these chief justices’ careers alongside that of a list of lesser-known Israeli jurists – judges, presidents of courts, and chief judges (i.e., heads of the Magistrate Courts), and Ministry of Justice senior officials – who devoted a great deal of effort to managerial, administrative aspects in the operation of the judiciary, and were interlinked in a complex web of affiliations and tensions.

The main protagonists in the drama of the history of the administration of courts in Israel have been, from an early stage, a state agency called the Administration of the Courts, and its head, the director of courts, located institutionally between the minister of justice and the chief justice. Our story will open with the appointment of the first director and the emergence of the nascent administration in 1952, largely according to a vision seminally outlined by Olshan. We will end with a reform proposal, sponsored by Shamgar in the mid-1990s, to do away with the ministerial involvement in the administration and replace it with a novel, judicial conference. As we shall see, the latter proposal turned out to be abortive. Its failure left in place the Olshan-inspired structure, thus attesting to its durability and predominance in the history of Israeli court administration. The Olshan model – which is designated below as the director of courts model – will be therefore elaborately featured in our discussion.

While the scholarship has examined the Israeli judiciary, its history, and modes of operation, it has not typically focused on the administration of courts. Notably, scholarship on the Israeli judiciary has discussed its relationship with the executive branch and the legislature at length.³ Likewise, the scholarship devoted to the administration of Israeli courts, sparse as it is, also mostly focuses on the relationship between the executive and the judiciary.⁴ No doubt, some of the most important dilemmas regarding the administration of courts in Israel are concerned with the division of labor between these two branches of government. Still, subsuming the realm of the administration of courts under this monodirectional tension – thus reducing it into an inter-branch tug-of-war – resulted in a skeletal understanding, at best. This article will break new grounds, therefore, in directly addressing the history of court administration in Israel, specifically that of the Administration, and granting it its rightful place in the study of the Israeli judiciary.

As our analysis will show, over time, the administration became a central arena where inter-branch and other fundamental tensions were handled, and the director became indispensable in efforts to dissolve them. Indeed, as our story will illustrate, over the years inter-branch relations were earnestly debated alongside complex dilemmas of judicial administration (e.g., whether it should be centralized or de-centralized). Other loaded dilemmas, which also occupied center stage in discussions surrounding Israeli court administration, concerned centrifugal pressures from individual judges as well as from “clients” of the judiciary.

In fact, the article will identify four distinct models of court governance around which the various strands of the ongoing discussions coalesced over the years. We define and name these models through the central figures holding the power to “run the show” in court administration, as each model singles out a different officeholder as having jurisdiction over it: the chief justice, the minister of justice, the director of courts, and a collegial body of judges. Accordingly, the four models are: The chief justice model (prevalent up to 1948); the ministerial model (1948–1952); the director of courts model (prevalent since 1952); and the judicial conference model (discussed in the 1980s and 1990s).⁵ As will become clear below, some variations of these models were advanced from time to time, particularly by those seeking to free presidents of courts from the director’s grip, so that they would have a greater share in the management of “their” courts – either under the command of the chief justice or the justice minister (i.e., as part of the first or second model, respectively). This embryonic description of the history of court administration may seem to suggest that the director of courts model will emerge triumphant from our story, but this has not been a foregone conclusion, as it has faced incessant attempts at replacement by proponents of other configurations.

This article is part of a larger-scale project, entirely dedicated to court administration in Israel – its history as well as its present situation: its modes of operation, critical junctures in its history, and the legal, socio-political, and organizational contexts within which it operates. Thus, in another part of this project, we focused only on the period of 1948–1952, to focus on relating one, albeit seminal, episode in the history of the administration: its creation.⁶ In yet another part of the project, we shifted gear and concentrated on current practices of court administration, relying on regulation theory rather than on historical methodology, to argue that the administration has significantly evolved, especially since the 1990s, into a quasi-autonomous central agency.⁷ The present article completes the chronology of these previous two articles, providing for the first time a comprehensive history of the Israeli history of court administration, in general, and of the Administration, in particular. As such, the article provides a thick analysis of the Administration’s business as well as the internal and external tensions under which it operated.

One cannot overemphasize the importance of court administration to an understanding of the Israeli judiciary, its powers, modus operandi, and relationship with other branches of government. Particularly, the robust comparative literature on the rise of judicial power has focused in recent years on the corresponding upsurge in judicial self-government.⁸ Understanding the history of court administration – specifically, the possible emergence, dynamics, and limits of the Israeli version of judicial self-government – is thus crucial for an appreciation of the relationships among the branches of government in Israel. Better still, it is crucial for a fuller understanding of the trajectory of the Israeli judiciary itself.

Taking an even wider view, a study of the history of court administration, keeping in mind historical methodologies, sources, and questions, not only provides a new, deeper understanding of the Israeli judiciary but also a better grasp of the institutional history of the state of Israel at large. It raises fundamental historiographical questions implicated within that history – notably, questions about the relative importance of social structures versus individual agency. Correspondingly, our study investigates, in the Israeli context, the agency of various individuals inside and outside state administration (and inside and outside of the Administration) – individuals with their own, possibly idiosyncratic, cultural backgrounds – in shaping the pertinent state institutions, and looks into the question of how path-dependent these institutions’ histories really were.

In sum, in providing a thick, contextualized description of the Administration’s business and the institutional reality within which it evolved, the study presented in this article may offer a significant contribution to the literature. It will add an important chapter to the history of Israeli institutions in general, and the Israeli judiciary in particular. Additionally, drawing on a wealth of fascinating primary sources, it will shed light on the inner workings of the judiciary and its bureaucracy, topics rarely discussed in the literature.

The article proceeds as follows: in Chapter II, we give some background on court administration in Mandatory Palestine and Israel before the establishment of the administration. In Chapter III, we pause to reflect on the institutional design of the director of courts model, specifically that of the Administration, which is described as a servant of two masters: the minister of justice and the chief justice. In Chapter IV, we analyze the director of courts’ function after 1952 as a buffer easing inter-branch tensions between the executive and the judiciary. Chapter V describes unsuccessful (and hitherto unknown) attempts at institutional administrative reform. Chapter VI zooms in on three enduring pressures, or tensions, that cut across the historiography of the administration of courts (beyond the inter-branch tensions): decentralization pressures from the presidents of courts; counter-hierarchical pressures from the rank-and-file judges; and tensions between the judiciary and its clients. In the conclusion, we briefly allude to more recent developments that go beyond the scope of the article.

Early beginnings: 1918–1952

Upon the establishment of the State of Israel, the founding fathers of the Israeli justice system made a conscious decision to relinquish the Mandatory ways of judicial administration. In general, under British rule, the administration of courts, which was resistant to executive meddling, was accordingly left to the senior judges. As its name suggests, in this chief justice model, the chief justice had the supreme and independent authority of administering the courts, and he did so through an assistant, at first called the superintendent of the courts, and later (since the 1930s) the chief registrar of the Supreme Court of Palestine. Moreover, the presidents of each individual court, too, were entrusted with administrative powers within “their” own courts, under the overall supervision of the chief justice and his assistant.⁹

Aiming to chart a new administrative path, the first Israeli minister of justice, Pinchas Rosen (Felix Rosenblüth), inaugurated a German-continental model of court administration, defined above as the ministerial model.¹⁰ The “German-continental” model was so called because it was premised on the German model of court administration, in which the responsibility for court administration rested with the minister of justice.¹¹ Thus, the structure of the Ministry of Justice, in general, followed mostly the German archetype,¹² just as most of its top members, including Minister Rosen and State Attorney Haim (Herman) Cohn, were natives to and identified with the German legal culture, due to their backgrounds, and despite the otherwise tremendous impact of the British legal culture on many other aspects of the nascent Israeli legal culture.

Accordingly, in July 1948 the “Courts Department” was formed within the Ministry, and again, not unlike some continental systems, heading this new Courts Department was a judge. In this case, it was the Magistrate Court judge, Tzion Aluf, who was appointed for the task at hand.¹³

The ministerial model floundered from the outset. The Courts Department was extremely small, consisting of only three members, Judge Aluf included. It was also short-lived, lasting only for four years, until August 1, 1952, when Judge Aluf returned to regular judicial duties and the minister of justice abolished the Courts Department. Throughout its existence, the Department was never an independent unit within the Ministry. Aluf worked under the Ministry’s top officials, who – along with senior Israeli judges – increasingly sidelined him.¹⁴ It seems that, over time, judges became increasingly piqued by the fact that, to them, low-ranking Justice Ministry officials bossed them around. Be that for his junior judicial rank or other reasons, it was widely felt especially among senior judges that Aluf (who was not part of the Ashkenazi judicial elite) was not able to command sufficient gravitas vis-à-vis judges to establish himself as an authoritative, beneficial, meaningful player in the management of the judiciary.

Importantly, this growing resentment toward the ministerial model was also expressed in principle constitutional terms, revolving around separation-of-power arguments. Drawing on such phraseology and its purported traction among the political elite of the time, it was asked, notably by Olshan, in the context of the ministerial model, how could low-level Ministry officials discipline and manage the actions of judges without infringing on the public perception of their independence?¹⁵

The Olshan report

During the short period of the Courts Department’s operations, there were many public discussions and complaints about delays in courts’ proceedings and their inefficient administration. There was a ubiquitous feeling at the time that the judiciary faced an acute crisis in its operations.¹⁶ It was against this background that Minister Rosen asked Olshan in mid 1950 to conduct a comprehensive survey of the operation of the District Courts throughout the land.¹⁷ The survey resulted in the 1950 Olshan Report. It was a testament to Olshan’s eminence in the young Israeli legal system that it was he who was entrusted with the mission. The views expressed and recommendations made in the report, we argue, established the path taken by the administration of justice in Israel from Olshan’s era to our time.

The Olshan report should be read as an outright attack on the ministerial model. It was obvious that in his judgment the ministerial model had failed to provide good management and was conducive to cultivating disobedient behavior among judges to the detriment of the judiciary as a whole. Hence, finding fault with the ministerial model both on separation-of-power and managerial grounds, Olshan became one of its most formidable detractors.

Olshan wholeheartedly endorsed the view that Israeli courts were poorly managed at the time. The root cause of the problem, as Olshan saw it, was a pervasive lack of leadership in the judiciary and judges’ slack discipline, which undermined the court’s performance. Whereas during the Mandate, the authority of the chief justice was such that judges felt obliged to fall in line with his administrative directives, Olshan wrote in the report, the Israeli judiciary was bereft of such an authority. Little wonder, he thought, that disarray followed. Generally, Olshan also found fault with the fact that intra-judiciary centrifugal tendencies were unchecked and scathingly rebuked the presidents of courts for not following a uniform line in running their courts.

Olshan’s denunciation of the ministerial model, in which a low-ranking judge would act as the point person of the justice minister, led him to outline a new direction for the administration of Israeli courts. In considering the question of what to do next, Olshan prescribed the installment of a new officeholder, with particular credentials, to be in charge, within a unique administrative structure, of the administration of courts. That officeholder would become the director, who – according to Olshan – should be a high-ranking judge (“a rank not lower than that of a President of District Court”). Olshan also sought to ensure that the director would keep a degree of separation from the justice minister, while conceding that the director should remain under the remit of the minister. He thought that the director should be kept separate from the Ministry (though answering directly to the minister), both organizationally and even physically. In fact, he insisted that the director’s unit (that would become the Administration) should be accommodated in a courthouse. The Olshan organizational-spatial-constitutional formation revealed his conviction that the office of the directorship should be placed in an intermediate position between the judiciary – and its head, the chief justice – and the minister of justice. Thus placed, the director would serve as a buffer between the Ministry and the judiciary. Such a buffer was necessary, he thought, to preserve the appearance – and the reality – of judicial independence.

Olshan was bent on bringing the entire judiciary under the fold of one directorship in an effort to counter (what he regarded as) harmful diffusive organizational tendencies of the various courts. He therefore preordained the appointment of one central directorship of courts, to have uniform jurisdiction over all of the courts. According to Olshan, the (one) director was to be a senior and respected judge with sufficient gravitas to uphold discipline and increase efficiency and uniformity among judges. Additionally, the director had to be kept separate from the ministry – he must not be an executive official – yet subject directly to the minister. Such a configuration, Olshan believed, would not infringe on judicial independence, while allowing for superior court administration.¹⁸

Olshan himself would later argue that in putting forward his distinct model of court administration, he relied not only on what seemed to be consensual constitutional principles but also on the political realities of the day. As he would relate decades later, it had been clear to Olshan in the early 1950s that the Progressive Party, which controlled the Ministry of Justice (via its leader, Rosen), would not agree to transfer the minister’s powers to the chief justice.¹⁹ Minister Rosen, however, mentioned (at a Knesset debate) that Chief Justice Olshan always felt that the minister should receive these court-administration powers.²⁰ In any case, Olshan’s model made the minister of justice part of the administrative structure governing the courts, apparently in the name of accountability and democratic legitimacy. At the same time, the model – the director of courts model – was premised on appointing a senior judge to fulfill the role of the administrator. The judicial experience and rank of the administrator would ensure that the chief justice and the administrator would speak the same language and that the rest of the judicial system would thus be expected to follow his managerial directives.

Other reform proposals

Olshan was not the only one considering how to fix the ways of the Israeli judiciary at the time. Several proposals were put forward. Notably, in the same year in which Olshan composed his report, 1950, a particularly meaningful regionalization initiative was put forward to the justice minister and the chief justice by the president of the District Court of Haifa, Ya’akov Azulai. According to President Azulai’s outline, most administrative matters would come under the purview of the three presidents of the District Courts.²¹ Azulai’s was the chief justice model, albeit with a modification. The chief justice, he suggested, would be the central authority that would take care of matters pertaining to judges, and would have an assistant to help him. However, Azulai made clear that in practice these matters as well as other administrative issues would be mostly handled by the presidents.²²

The high tide of the models centering on the presidents of courts came when the head of the Courts Department, Judge Aluf, notified the minister of justice of his intention to leave his post. Subsequently, in March 1952 Attorney General Cohn proposed an even bolder version of a decentralized model, but in this rendition, it was rather a variation of the ministerial model. Namely, here, following the disbandment of the Courts Department, the presidents of courts were to administer their courts, but each would be working directly with the minister.²³ The presidents and the chief justice rejected Cohn’s motion for various reasons. The President of Tel Aviv’s District Court Nathan Bar-Zakai thought, similarly to Olshan, that the administration of courts should be centrally managed by a senior judge, and be kept separate from the Ministry of Justice. Bar-Zakai, however, did not advocate for a complete severance of the Ministry of Justice, but rather thought that the judge managing the administration of the court should serve as a liaison between the minister and the chief justice.²⁴

Debates ensued on the proposals of Bar-Zakai and others until July 1952, when the die was cast. The justice minister appointed District Court Judge Yehoshua Eisenberg – newly appointed to the rank of vice president of a District Court – to what would become the epicenter of the new model, the director of courts. The minister abolished the Courts Department and constituted instead the Administration of Courts, following a series of consultations with the chief justice, Eisenberg, and others.²⁵ This departure from the ministerial model and the launch of a new model of court administration took place during an interregnum moment at the apex of the legal system. It transpired during the brief period when Cohn replaced Dov Yosef as the justice minister, and at the twilight of Moshe Smoira’s tenure as the first Israeli chief justice. The essentials of the director of courts model from 1952 are still with us. Before we proceed, we should therefore explore in some detail its basic elements.

The administration as a servant of two masters, 1952

The Administration of Courts was a completely new type of administrative agency and was very different from its predecessor, the Courts Department. The new director of courts model was premised on the following elements:

1. The Administration of Courts – structurally, the directorship and the administration were kept outside of the Ministry of Justice’s organizational scheme. Following the Olshan design, the administration was placed in the building of the Supreme Court. Additionally, it had many more employees than the Courts Department. Whereas the Courts Department had only three employees (including Judge Aluf), by the end of 1953 the administration had seven employees. A decade later (in 1963) it had seventeen employees, and two decades (in 1973) later forty employees.²⁶

2. The director of courts – as prescribed by Olshan, the director was to be a senior judge to command the respect of judges, so that he could maintain discipline and increase efficiency among them. The directors were indeed high-ranking judges: they were usually elevated to the rank of president (or vice president) of a District Court upon nomination, and occasionally also appointed as the registrar of the Supreme Court.

3. The minister of justice – the various steps taken to isolate the administration from the Ministry of Justice notwithstanding, the director was to remain directly under the purview of the minister. In other words, as much as the new model laid the foundations for the Administration’s relative organizational autonomy and placed the director closer to the orbit of the chief justice, in important respects, it kept the minister’s authority over the director – in the name of representative accountability. Indeed, with the single exception of Minister Ya’akov Shimshon Shapira (who was the minister of justice between 1966 and 1974 and who will be further dealt with below), consecutive ministers emphasized time and again the importance of ultimate ministerial control over the administration of the courts.

4. Centralization of administration under a bifurcated line of command – there would be only one director, but he would be under the command of two, potentially opposing, masters. Olshan made it a point that there would be one director of courts in Israel to universally handle the administration of courts. Yet, the Olshan arrangement entrenched an ambiguity concerning the directorship’s line of command, subordinating the director to two masters, whose respective jurisdictions remained vague. It seemed to turn the director into the servant of the chief justice in matters relating directly to judges, such as discipline and hours of work, and of the minister in all other administrative matters.²⁷ In fact, when the director of courts model was launched, the minister of justice (who was, at the time, Attorney General Cohn), apparently keen to alleviate separation-of-power concerns of the kind raised by Olshan, declared that he would consult with the chief justice before making any major decision about the administration of the courts.²⁸ Soon thereafter, with the enactment of the 1953 Judges Law, the director of courts model’s ambiguity with respect to the command over the directorship was statutorily sanctioned, stipulating that the “minister of justice shall prescribe administrative arrangements for the courts […] The director of courts shall be responsible to the minister for implementation of the administrative arrangements.”²⁹

The first director of courts, Eisenberg, attempted from the outset to live up to Olshan’s vision of centralized and uniform procedures of the administration of justice, distributing numerous circulars to the presidents of courts and chief secretaries in the first few months after he took office on August 1, 1952. Director Eisenberg stipulated that the chief secretary of each court would take care of administrative matters in his own court. He further made it known that the chief secretaries would be responsible to him and would be supervised by the presidents of the District Courts and the chief judges of the Magistrate Courts. Indeed, Eisenberg made sure that court presidents had important parts to play by providing that they would take care of matters pertaining directly to judges (working hours, discipline, etc.) – all under his supervision.³⁰ In sum, the director promoted a centralized model of the administration of the courts, in the vein of Justice Olshan’s report. In that model, court chiefs and presidents were still playing important roles in the day-to-day operation of each court, but henceforth under the director’s command.

From the perspective of Olshan’s 1950 report, it is clear that the director of courts model should be regarded as a calculated attempt to address at least the following three persistent foci of contention that encumbered, and ultimately defeated, the ministerial model: (1) the inter-branch rivalry over the management of courts; (2) intra-judicial-branch centrifugal tendencies: notably, the need to discipline and manage judges and curb presidents of courts’ aspirations to be the masters of their domains; (3) courts’ clientele’s dissatisfaction with the judiciary’s inefficiency. According to this understanding, encoded into the very DNA of the director of courts model was a particular treatment of a series of systemic constitutional and operational tensions. But this model did more than that. It entailed a view of the administration of courts not as a distinct field of occupation, but rather as an occupation befitting a judge, i.e., a person not necessarily trained in the ways of administration. As we shall see below, this trait would come under attack in later decades, and still, to date, all directors have been (men) judges.

The administration of courts after 1952

What shape did the director and Administration take after their introduction in 1952? From an early stage, the director and Administration assembled court statistics; prepared the courts’ budget; dealt with public complaints against judges and other court personnel; managed the maintenance of court buildings; oversaw court organizational schemes aimed at enhancing courts’ efficiency; handled the judiciary’s public relations; and took care of manpower management.³¹ To be sure, the introduction of the Administration did not resolve all institutional strains embedded in the running of the judiciary, as we shall demonstrate in a moment. Nonetheless, now it was patently clear that the organizational terrain changed. To the extent that the chief justice, judges, the justice minister, ministry officials, and others took issue with the management of courts, they commonly engaged, in one way or another, with the director.

As a general matter, Eisenberg was able to introduce various intrusive measures to regulate the administration of justice – some originating with his own executive directives – without serious issue and generally appeared to wield control over the administration of courts much more effectively than Aluf ever had. By December 1952, for instance, Director Eisenberg was able to implement the governmental civil service regulations that had entered into force almost a year earlier, which applied to all employees of the Administration of the Courts but had not been enforced earlier in the Aluf period.³²

Similarly, following the appointment of Director Eisenberg, the institutional conflict between the ministry and the judiciary in matters of court administration was often mitigated by the intermediate position of the director – as long as he respected the minister’s authority over him.³³ The director, one might say, became time and again a lightning rod for such tensions.

As suggested by the metaphor of a lightning rod, the director shielded the judiciary from executive encroachments on judicial independence. He had become a buffer for the judges from interventions by the Ministry of Justice in the administration of the courts.³⁴ The minister of justice, for instance, regularly received complaints against judges on various matters, such as delays in granting judgments. He habitually relayed these complaints to the director (thus saving both the minister and the chief justice from the embarrassment of direct confrontation). The director, on his part, acted as he saw fit (e.g., dismissing the complaint or discreetly reprimanding the judge in a personal letter to act more quickly), but only in extreme cases did he copy the minister of justice and the chief justice on a letter castigating an individual judge.³⁵

Lastly, elusive as it is, at some point not too long after its installment, the directorship acquired a level of legitimacy not easily matched by justice ministers. In fact, it may be argued that the directorship’s very existence rendered ministerial interventions in the administration of justice suspicious. Thus, for example, in May 1974, Minister Haim Zadok (1974–1977) sought to introduce new rules regarding courts’ hours of operation. Until then, the Administration’s circulars had regulated court hours (such as the 1966 move from a six-day to a five-day workweek), rather than relying on ministerial directives. While Zadok was careful, in this case, to act in concert with the chief justice and Director Moshe Nacht, his initiative, perhaps as it was coming from the minister, was met with judges’ hostility.³⁶

Unsuccessful reforms: 1967–1995

Entrenched as the director of courts model became, the idea that the judiciary should administer itself independently endured and was occasionally voiced. Yet, the period beginning with the death of Judge Eisenberg in 1967, or even as far back as 1966, when the former first attorney general of Israel Y-S Shapira was appointed minister of justice, saw several attempts to reform the director of courts model of judicial administration so that it would be reoriented back to the Mandate, chief-justice-centered model.

The Shapira-Shamgar attempted reforms: 1966–1974

An opportunity for change arose, as noted, in 1966, when Minister Shapira replaced Minister Yosef. It seems that Minister – and former Attorney General – Shapira was extremely respectful of the independent position of the judiciary, and of the chief justice in particular.³⁷ Shortly after taking office, he met with the justices and presented the idea that he would transfer most of his administrative powers in regard to the courts to the chief justice. When he reported on this meeting to the Knesset, this idea was met with approval.³⁸ That it would meet with the approval of Chief Justice Olshan was obvious, and the two men actually were publicly interviewed on the subject in November 1966 and presented a uniform front on the need for reform as well as its outline.³⁹ Yet, Olshan had already retired by this time, and his successor, Chief Justice Agranat, was reportedly reluctant to handle such matters of administration. In an interview we held with former Chief Justice, the later Meir Shamgar, he speculated based on his acquaintance with Agranat that Chief Justice Agranat showed little interest in these administrative powers.⁴⁰

Shamgar was in a good position to know the views of Agranat. In 1968 Minister Shapira made Shamgar the Attorney General. Since then, and up to May 1974, Shamgar was instrumental in trying to promote the transfer of administrative powers from the executive to the judiciary. He even wrote a draft bill to this effect and circulated it among various ministries in 1971. Minister Shapira himself continued to promote this initiative, both with the press and in the Knesset.⁴¹ According to the 1971 draft bill, the chief justice was to decide upon the “administrative arrangements” of the courts in general, but each president of court was to decide upon the “administrative arrangements” of his own court. This draft did not become a bill, but the Ministry of Justice tried to promote it (or comparable drafts) up to 1974.⁴²

This was the closest Israel came to a real reform in that direction. Even though the initiative received the approval of the Finance Ministry, not to mention the imprimatur of the minister of justice, it did not turn into an actual bill, let alone receive a statutory basis. What probably failed it was the aforementioned reticence of Chief Justice Agranat. It seems, moreover, that with the resignation of Minister Shapira in March 1974, the government’s willingness to forgo its managerial powers vis-à-vis the courts diminished.⁴³ Specifically, Minister Zadok, who replaced Shapira, was a supporter of the status quo with regard to the administration of the courts and thought that the justice minister should retain his administrative authority. He was a forceful and hands-on minister in judicial administration matters.⁴⁴ It was evident that Zadok’s appointment essentially sapped the Shapira-Shamgar initiative.⁴⁵ Tellingly, Attorney General Shamgar held the last meetings to discuss this reform initiative in May 1974, shortly following the appointment of Minister Zadok.⁴⁶

Shamgar’s attempted reforms: 1983–1995

In 1975, Shamgar was appointed to the Supreme Court and served as the chief justice from 1983 until 1995. It was Shamgar who carried the torch of Minister Shapira and Chief Justice Olshan. As before, and already as a justice, he was known to support the idea that Israeli courts should independently administer themselves.⁴⁷ Once becoming chief justice, he returned to actively promoting this idea. In 1986, he initiated an informal and short-lived Israeli Judicial Conference, modeled on the U.S. Federal Judicial Conference. It had thirty-six members, of which twenty-one were judges elected by their peers, and the rest were ex-officio members, mostly presidents of courts. The Judicial Conference had plenary sessions, sitting sub-committees on specific subjects, as well as a steering committee. The rules of the Judicial Conference were published in the official publication of the judiciary, but when Chief Justice Shamgar tried to have them published in the State’s official publication, he was rebuked by Minister of Justice Avraham Sharir.⁴⁸

The Israeli Judicial Conference faltered before it achieved any formal or statutory basis. After a short while, the judges of the District Courts withdrew from it, thus putting an end to the enterprise. The background to the actions of the District Court judges was an outline for a reform in the structure of courts, which proposed to add another appeals court hierarchically above the District Courts (and below the Supreme Court). This proposed (and ultimately failed) reform made the District Court judges feel demoted.⁴⁹ Hence, they revoked their support for the Shamgar-sponsored Judicial Conference.

Shamgar’s final attempt to form judge-led court administration came in 1994, when he and Minister of Justice David Libai appointed a public commission to review the independence of the judiciary and whether it should be re-organized as a self-governing state organ. The commission’s majority opinion was to recommend the formation of a more independent, U.S.-styled court administration,⁵⁰ but its commission’s recommendations were ultimately ignored. The government, and especially the Finance and Justice Ministries, opposed them. Thus, the formal status quo remains to this day, despite a few other attempted reforms over the years, which are outside the scope of this article (but are nonetheless in similar veins).

Enduring tensions and points of contention: 1952–1995

Having canvased the emergence and fortification of the administration and directorship over the decades, we now wish to highlight key systemic tensions or pressures that the administration had to reckon with time and again. As we will illustrate below, the manners in which directors and their counterparts handled such pressures set, to a considerable extent, the Administration’s trajectory.

We will explore three such tensions, the origin of which is easily understood. To recall, Olshan’s director of courts model sought to create a central administrative agency, headed by a senior judge who would become a top figure in the judicial hierarchy and would thus be able to keep all the judges in line. But how could this authoritarian hierarchical model be reconciled with the director’s other mission of maintaining individual judges’ independence? This concern was shared not only among the individual judges, who exerted counter-hierarchical pressures and were especially forthcoming in matters pertaining to their working conditions, but also by presidents of courts, who sought to preserve and even increase their administrative powers. Concurrently, calls to professionalize the directorship were mounting with the evident increase in the complexity of the operation, raising the question of whether it would be wise to leave the administration of courts to a judge lacking managerial credentials, respected as he may be by his peers. The tensions between the administration and the individual judges, the presidents of courts, and those who supported professionalization remained constant sources of adversity as well as driving forces in the history of the administration of the courts, as illustrated below.

Presidents of courts

At the epicenter of the pressure to decentralize have been the presidents of courts (and chief judges in the Magistrate Courts), who held substantial powers of judicial administration, e.g., case assignment among the judges,⁵¹ throughout. As will become evident below, the question here was whether they should play an even greater role in matters of administration. Moreover, as we shall further see, presidents located in the periphery saw things differently. Thus, for example, in July 1967, not long after the Six-Day War, the President of the District Court of Haifa, Azulai, began promoting again his proposal for a major restructuring of the administration of courts in Israel. The timing was hardly accidental yet had nothing to do with the war. Rather, President Azulai waited only thirty days after Eisenberg’s death before promoting anew his 1950 version of a decentralized chief justice model. In his proposal, Azulai suggested that the director’s position would be canceled altogether. In a reversion to the British Mandate chief justice model of court administration, Azulai proposed that the chief justice would instead hold all powers of court administration and would be in direct contact with the minister of justice. Furthermore, under Azulai’s initiative, each president of a District Court would hold independent power to direct the administration of his court.⁵² President Azulai promoted his proposed reform in 1967–68 but to no avail.⁵³ Nonetheless, the decentralization pressures of the presidents as well as tensions between the center and the periphery remained constant throughout.⁵⁴

From the establishment of the State of Israel, court presidents showed tremendous initiative in implementing their own visions of how to run the courts. Already during the Courts Department period between 1948 and 1952, presidents of courts closely monitored the work of their chief secretaries and registrars; they even suggested and introduced reforms to the rules of court and the procedures governing the administration of justice,⁵⁵ which were not always agreeable to the general public.⁵⁶ Furthermore, over the years, numerous presidents of courts felt confident enough both to advance their own administrative reforms but also to reject comparable proposals not to their liking, even when endorsed by the justice minister. To illustrate, in 1968, the minister of justice presented the presidents of the District Courts with the system of case assignment devised by the President of the District Court of Tel Aviv (it could “be of use,” noted the minister). The President of the District Court of Beer Sheva rejected it out of hand. It was inapplicable, he argued.⁵⁷ It seems that such a homogenization initiative, setting Tel Aviv as a standard, simply ran counter to the entrenched practice of each president of the court.

Finally, we should note that court presidents not only exhibited individual agency, but also acted in concert to advance their views. Presidents’ forums occasionally convened throughout the judiciary’s history, and were consulted with.⁵⁸ Similarly, occasionally (e.g., in 1964–1966) the Magistrate Courts’ chief judges also acted in concert.⁵⁹

Counter-hierarchical pressures

Judges too exerted an almost constant pressure to have their voice heard in the running of the courts, and especially in matters pertaining to their working conditions (e.g., wages, sick leaves, casual leaves, and working hours). These pressures added up to the decentralization pressures exerted by the presidents of the District Courts and the chief judges of the Magistrate Court, while admittedly undermining, to an extent, the rule of these local courts’ chiefs. The director held the middle ground in the resultant complex matrix. On the one hand, he was the long arm of the chief justice and the minister, both generally pushing toward centralization and efficiency of the judiciary. To this end, he sought to maintain uniformity, efficiency, and discipline in the operation of the courts. But on the other hand, the director also served as a point of reference to individual judges seeking protections from “their” local presidents. And thus, while ascribing to the presidents an active role in the operation of “their” courts, he also set its limits.

Indeed, it was only to be expected that intra-branch tension between the Administration and the individual judges would result from the introduction of the 1952 reform. After all, Justice Olshan suggested the centralized director of courts model of judicial administration as a way to discipline the judges and streamline the judicial production line.⁶⁰ Hence, notably, while according to the letter of the law, the director had no role in formal disciplinary proceedings (initiated by the minister before a special panel of judges), he was, in fact, central to them, as the minister officially empowered the director to be in charge of coordinating official disciplinary proceedings with the chief justice. Even more tellingly, official disciplinary proceedings were often unnecessary, as the director – with the backing of the chief justice – could use them as a threat. As already noted, the director would regularly receive public grievances against judges, and act to resolve issues that rose therefrom. Similarly, the director would exhort slow or inefficient judges to do better, and in extreme cases to resign.⁶¹

To be sure, directors, in trying to regulate the work of judges and courts, occasionally had to contend with judges. Thus, for example, Director Eisenberg faced opposition to the implementation of new working hours and the division of the courts into separate (civil and criminal) departments in 1952. Several judges in the Tel-Aviv court tried to get appointed to this or that department of the court (even if the director thought they suited another), while judges in Haifa refused altogether to comply with some of his directives.⁶² Still, since 1952, the office of director was imbued with more authority and of a higher judicial rank, and the first director himself was more tactful, most – but certainly not all – direct internal confrontations were bypassed. Generally, it seems that Director Eisenberg was largely successful in realizing his policies.

Moving to the other side of the institutional dialectic, judges repeatedly struggled to maintain and improve their working conditions, and the director was a key figure in these matters.⁶³ He could ensure that the conditions of judges were recognized. He was regularly the mediator between the judges and the Justice Ministry, whose cooperation was often necessary for the attainment of sought-after employment and other benefits.

Illustrations can be drawn already from Eisenberg’s tenure, for he was deeply involved in the management of judges’ terms of employment. For instance, in December 1952, not long after his installment as the first director, the chief justice asked Eisenberg to coordinate the work of a committee of judges charged with examining judges’ casual leaves, sick leave, and pension. The committee, which was composed of two Supreme Court justices, three District Court judges, three Magistrate Court judges, and the director, was formed in the wake of the following, indicative episode: On December 4, 1952, the District Court judges requested the chief justice’s participation in a conference on judges’ employment conditions, such as wages and casual leaves. Chief Justice Smoira, who feared collective action of judges from very early on, charged the director with canceling this conference. Three weeks later, the aforementioned committee was appointed in its stead.⁶⁴

Chief Justice Olshan, who replaced Chief Justice Smoira, was also ardently opposed to the collective activities of judges. Perhaps the most explosive episode in his relationship with the director was in this context. In 1962, while the chief justice was abroad, the director allowed and facilitated the scheduling of a one-day judicial conference and invited the chief justice to speak at that conference. The chief justice was livid. On September 26, 1962, he sent a stern letter to the director. He said that he was opposed, as he always had been, to a state-wide conference of judges and registrars. He feared that this would be the first stage in turning the judges into a labor union. The conference was thus ultimately canceled.⁶⁵

The successors of Chief Justice Olshan were more pliant in the matter of judicial conferences. In 1965, Director Eisenberg finally managed to hold a conference, of which Chief Justice Agranat, who replaced Chief Justice Olshan in that same year, was explicitly proud.⁶⁶ The practice of judicial conferences continued and it seems that Chief Justice Agranat even encouraged it.⁶⁷ Finally, as already noted, Shamgar, in an effort to institutionalize the role of the judges in the administration of the courts, established in 1986 a standing Judicial Conference modeled on the U.S. Federal Judicial Conference. Shamgar perceived it as a measure through which the Magistrate Courts judges would be able to have a say in the running of the judiciary, but as already mentioned – it had a short life.⁶⁸ Attempts to resurrect it in the 1990s were unsuccessful.⁶⁹

Tensions between the judiciary and its clients & professionalization pressures

We now move to demonstrate how tensions between the judiciary and its clients and the pressures to professionalize the operation of the administration of courts have also shown their mark on the history of the Administration.

So, what were the grounds – and who was – pushing to professionalize? We do not have to look far for answers. As noted, already in 1949–1950 the judiciary was plagued by debilitating delays, as was made abundantly clear in Olshan’s 1950 report.⁷⁰ The 1952 decision to appoint the director and establish the Administration was explicitly meant to tackle these problems, and especially to eliminate delays in courts and thus relieve mounting discontent on the part of the judiciary’s various clients: (private and public) attorneys, litigants, and the public at large.⁷¹

To be sure, also after the 1952 reform, some level of discontent with how courts – and individual judges – managed themselves was virtually constant. But after 1952, it was usually the director – more than the chief justice and the justice minister – who intercepted such complaints, and various clients soon moved to directly address them to the newly appointed director. In fact, one of Eisenberg’s first “clients” was the State Attorney, whose grievances found a very receptive ear in the director.⁷² Now, it was the director who repeatedly had to decide how much credence to give to any complaint and which action, if any, should he take thereafter.⁷³

Subsequently, in the 1960s the State Comptroller also joined the discussion at issue. The director regularly reported to the State Comptroller on court statistics and the state of court administration since the 1950s in the context of the prevailing budgetary provisions.⁷⁴ Yet, in the late 1960s, the State Comptroller began to inspect the Administration more actively. For example, in late 1968, the Administration established a division for “Organization and Methods” following a 1967 inspection of the State Comptroller. Several reports were published later on in the early 1970s: a 1970 State Comptroller report on the administration and finances of the Magistrate Courts; a 1972 similar report on the administration of the District Courts; and in 1973 a report targeting specifically the organization of the Administration and working methods it promoted in courts. The 1973 report was especially critical of the modus operandi of units within the Administration of Courts, such as the said “Organization and Methods” division, whose purpose was to promote efficiency.⁷⁵

The Ministry of Finance, which controlled the budget of the judiciary, generally exerted the greatest outside pressure to professionalize courts’ administration. The day-to-day operation of the courts depended on the Ministry of Finance, and the director had to regularly deal with it in various matters, such as the use of budget reserves for the operation of the Magistrate Court in Beer Sheva (in 1953), or funding the acquisition of a new court building in Tel-Aviv (in 1953–1955).⁷⁶ As such, the Ministry of Finance had tremendous leverage to force reform, greater efficiency, and professionalism. And indeed, it constantly used its leverage to put pressure on the director to reform the administration.⁷⁷ The director, for his part, had to frequently push back against the demands of the Finance Ministry, to the point of threatening that the judiciary might collapse if more funds would not be provided (usually trying to harness the minister of justice’s support in negotiations with Finance).⁷⁸

In this tug-of-war, on several occasions since the mid-1950s, and throughout the period examined, the Ministry of Finance declared a budgetary “freeze” in an effort to compel the judiciary into reforming its administration. Each time, the director resisted and negotiated with the Finance Ministry to remove it, with varied success.⁷⁹

Pressures to professionalize were particularly felt during the 1960s. We have already noted the State Comptroller’s efforts in this regard, but that was the period when the Ministry of Finance and the Civil Service Commission also increased their efforts in the same direction. For instance, in 1966, the Ministry of Finance again froze all procedures to fill open positions in the courts’ administration with such motivation in mind.⁸⁰ Partly in response to such pressures, the director created a forum of Chief Secretaries of Courts in an attempt to introduce more uniform modes of administration.⁸¹

Large-scale attempts to institute more professional managerial practices in the administration of the courts originated in the Administration’s dealings with the Ministry of Finance. Not all such attempts were successful. Here is an indicative episode: in 1969–70, as part of budgetary negotiations, the ministers of justice and finance appointed a commission, which included representatives of the Administration, Finance Ministry, and the Civil Service Commission, to examine the personnel requirements of the judiciary. Tellingly, the joint commission declared that it “could not reach an objective model that would prove the basis for determining the personnel necessary for court operation.”⁸² It tried to create a system for information gathering and reporting alongside such an objective – but failed.⁸³ Still, the Finance Ministry was able to strong-arm the director, through an inter-ministry efficiency commission, to create the above-mentioned division of “Organization and Methods” in 1968. Although established following a Comptroller inspection, it had been the Ministry of Finance that first exerted the pressure to create it.⁸⁴

Another front of the professionalization debate concerned the sensitive question of the director’s (and court administrators’) qualifications and background. The dilemma was quite clear: on the one hand, since 1952, the appointed director had always been a judge because he was subject to the minister, i.e., to prevent even the appearance of executive infringement on the independence of judges. On the other hand, judges were not experienced administrators by training, and an operation as complex as the judiciary should be entrusted to one who was. With the rise in the demands to professionalize, the push in the latter direction intensified.

President Azulai’s aforementioned reform initiative of 1967, for instance, stipulated that the chief justice’s administrative aid need not be a judge, but must be a professional administrator. Tellingly, in 1968, as even more pressure was mounted upon the Administration to become more efficient,⁸⁵ Moshe Nacht, previously the legal advisor of the Ministry of Defense, was appointed director and was also appointed a judge. It seems that the idea began to take hold that the director need not be necessarily a judge but an experienced administrator.

Actually, it may be suggested that the long tenures of directors, at least through the 1980s, were indicative both of the long process of induction and professionalization needed on the job and of a prevailing recognition that such a process was indeed required of directors. The first director, Eisenberg, held office for 15 years, from 1952 until his death in 1967. The second director, Moshe Nacht, was in office even longer, from 1968 until his retirement in 1985, and his deputy (since 1968), Arie Hagger, replaced him and held office until 1989.⁸⁶

While the transfer of powers from a judge to a non-judge, professional administrator never occurred, in 1992, Chief Justice Shamgar convinced the minister of justice to amend the relevant statute allowing for a professional director rather than a judge to be appointed as the director. Thus, today, the director is still subject to the minister but does not have to be a judge, though he has invariably been one.⁸⁷ Shamgar’s intent in promoting this statutory change was clearly to enhance the Administration’s professional stature. In this matter, as in his unsuccessful judicial conference enterprise, he was explicitly inspired by the U.S. ethos of a professional administration of courts, presided over by the U.S. Judicial Conference.⁸⁸

Conclusion

It is too easy to reduce the history of Israeli court administration to a simple rivalry between the executive and the judiciary, in which the judiciary has relentlessly struggled to take control of the administration of courts – from the early beginnings of the ministerial model, through the director of courts model up to the (failed) reforms period. That is certainly part of the story. Yet, as the analysis conducted in this article has demonstrated, it is only one part of the story. The administration of courts in Israel saw hierarchical rifts, centralization versus decentralization conflicts, pressures of low-level judges to gain a voice in the administration of the courts, and campaigns to create a more professional and efficient judiciary. Out of the resultant vortex of vectors emerged the history told in this article.

In concluding, we would like to return to Shamgar and revisit that period of attempted reforms, which was supposedly simply about that: Shamgar’s attempted and ultimately failed reforms. Yet, as we illustrate above, there is much to be learned from Shamgar’s failure. First, it attests to the endurance of the Olshan director of courts model and its centrality in the history of the Israeli judiciary. Second, it should serve as a reminder that, dominant as Chief Justices Olshan and Shamgar were, they did not always emerge triumphant: neither on the bench nor in their considerable dealings with the administration of courts. Third, the reform Shamgar sought to advance, as well as its tepid reception by judges of various courts, were indicative of the rarely discussed, counter-hierarchical forces brewing in the judiciary, which our analysis sought to highlight. Lastly, it is worth noting that Shamgar’s unsuccessful reforms were harbingers of a recent drastic change that chronologically goes beyond the scope of this article. Ultimately, the past two decades saw the administration evolving into a powerful, semi-autonomous, increasingly professional regulatory agency of the courts.⁸⁹ These recent developments of the past two decades were a product of the processes analyzed in the article, and the tensions that drove the history of the administration up to the 1990s, as outlined in our discussion, ushered in the contemporary model of court administration. What we leave for a separate, much-needed discussion, is the question of whether the current state of affairs – especially when examined against the various alternative models that figured in the history of Israeli court administration – is superior to the alternatives; indeed, whether it is normatively desirable and conducive to efficient court governance.⁹⁰

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to former Deputy Attorney General Judith Karp and former Chief Justice the late Meir Shamgar for private interviews. We also thank Yoel Lavie and Liel Peleg for research assistance. Earlier versions of the article were presented at the annual meeting of the Israeli Society of Law and History (Jerusalem, 2015), the Tel-Aviv University Law School Faculty Seminar (Tel-Aviv, 2017), and the international workshop “Managing Judges: Technology, History and Separation of Powers” (Haifa University, 2016). The authors have benefitted tremendously from comments made on those occasions and wish to thank their participants. In particular, we thank Chris Tomlins, Ron Harris, and Yoram Shachar for their generous, thoughtful, and detailed comments on the article made at the latter international workshop.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Israel Science Foundation under grant no. 860/12.

Notes on contributors

Yair Sagy

Yair Sagy is a Senior Lecturer of Law at the Faculty of Law, University of Haifa.

Guy Lurie

Guy Lurie is a Research Fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute.

Amnon Reichman

Amnon Reichman is a Professor of Law at the Faculty of Law, University of Haifa.

Notes

1. Olshan was one of the first five justices appointed to the Supreme Court of the sovereign State of Israel, originally under the leadership of Moshe Smoira, the first Israeli chief justice. However, Smoira was hardly a healthy man when elevated to the bench in 1948, and even though Olshan would be formally made the stand-in chief justice only in 1953, there was no doubt that in effect Olshan headed the Court since the beginning of the 1950s. As we shall see, early on, Olshan revealed an interest in administrative matters, much more than his colleagues. See: a letter of the Secretary of the chief justice to the director of courts (October 15, 1952), the director’s reply (November 11, 1952) and the circular he distributed according to the acting chief justice’s comment included in his secretary’s letter, circular no. 2 to the magistrate judges (October 17, 1952), all in Israel State Archives (ISA) ISA-Courts-SupremeCourtPres-000b2jz. See also: several other circulars that the director distributed through the rest of 1952 on various matters, all intended to create a uniform and centralized administration of courts.

2. Prior to his appointment to the Supreme Court in 1975, Shamgar had been the military advocate general and the state’s attorney general.

3. Shetreet, “Tarbut ha-atzmatut ha-shiputit,” 525–583.

4. Shetreet, “Hizuk ha-reshut ha-shofetet,” 174–194. But see: Lurie et al., “Nefilato ve-aliyato shel minhal batey ha-mishpat”

5. Šipulová et al., “Judicial Self-Governance Index.”

6. Ibid.

7. Lurie et al., “Agencification and the administration.”

8. Garoupa and Ginsburg, Judicial Reputation; Kosař, Perils of Judicial Self-Government.

9. Sagy, “Le-ma’an ha-tzedek,” 225–297; Letter of the Officer Administering the Government to the Chief Justice (October 21, 1935), ISA ISA-MandatoryOrganizations-SecretaryJudicial-000n7ye.

10. Shetreet, “Arba’im shana la-mishpat ha-hukati,” 573–615; Rubinstein, “Shoftey Eretz,” 40–45 and 59; Olshan, Din-U-Dvarim, 223; The handwritten notes of Chief Justice Smoira before an August 17, 1948 meeting with the Attorney General, Israel State Archives-Privatecollections-MosheZmora-000lgjd; Shetreet,“Hizuk ha-reshut ha-shofetet;” Courts Order (Transitory Provisions), 1949, § 10. https://lawjournal.huji.ac.il/sites/default/files/2018–01/%D7%97%D7%99%D7%96%D7%95%D7%A7%20%D7%94%D7%A8%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%AA%20%D7%94%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%A4%D7%98%D7%AA%20%D7%95%D7%A6%D7%9E%D7%A6%D7%95%D7%9D%20%D7%A1%D7%9E%D7%9B%D7%95%D7%99%D7%95%D7%AA%20%D7%A9%D7%A8%20%D7%94%D7%9E%D7%A9%D7%A4%D7%98%D7%99%D7%9D.pdf. Accessed July 5, 2023.

11. Millar and Baar, Judicial Administration in Canada, 64–65.

12. Clearly, other reasons also played a role in the emergent German-like design of the novel Justice Ministry. As pointed out to us by Yoram Shachar, Prime Minister Ben Gurion sought the support of the (“German”) Progressive Party – especially the support of its leader, Rosen – in order to form a coalition. As a result, the Ministry was cobbled up in 1948, under the understanding that Rosen would be in charge of it. On the Progressive Party, see: Getter, “Ha-hitargenut ha-politit ha-nifredet,” 240–291.

13. The agenda of a meeting of officials including the minister of justice (July 6, 1948), ISA ISA-justice-justice-000r6wv.

14. See correspondence on the budget for furnishing the Supreme Court, bypassing Judge Aluf (August 16, 1950), ISA ISA-Courts-SupremeCourtPres-000b2dz; Ministry of Justice decisions of October 4, 1949, and November 11, 1950, ordering the distribution of correspondence in various matters within the Ministry of Justice, ISA ISA-justice-justice-000rfzn. See also, for example, Meeting of March 28, 1949, ISA ISA-Courts-SupremeCourtPres-000b2dv; ISA ISA-Courts-SupremeCourtPres-000b2dz and ISA-Courts-SupremeCourtPres-000b2k4; Ben Aharon and Kleiman, “Ta’alumat ha-tmuna ha-hasera,” 19–24.

15. These sentiments were echoed in like-minded letters sent by leading attorneys to the minister and the chief justice in 1949 and 1950. See: Letter of Adv. Jacob Salomon to the Minister of Justice (November 15, 1949), ISA ISA-Privatecollections-YaacovSalomon-0010vjv; Report of Justice Olshan.

16. See, for instance: General Manager of the Ministry of Justice to the Chief Justice, Setting up a meeting on “measures to hasten the hearing of trials” (August 23, 1949), ISA ISA-Courts-SupremeCourtPres-000b2k5; various complaints on delays in courts (1950), ISA ISA-Courts-SupremeCourtPres-000b2k5; Y. Ophir. “Pigurim Be-Diyuney Beit Ha-Din Ha-Elyon [Delays in Supreme Court Proceedings],” Herut, February 8, 1949, 3, https://www.nli.org.il/he/newspapers/hrt/1949/02/08/01/article/55; Minister of Justice to Justice Olshan, Letter of Appointment to “review the status of work in the district courts” (June 13, 1950), ISA ISA-Courts-SupremeCourtPres-000b2dv. See further suggestions for reform from the years 1949–1952, below.

17. Ibid.

18. Report of Justice Olshan.

19. Olshan, Din u-dvarim, 225.

20. Divrei Ha-Knesset 46 (June 13, 1966), 1715. The interesting fact is that when Olshan’s director of courts model was installed, in July 1952, Rosen’s party, the Progressive Party, had not been part of the coalition parties forming the government for almost a year. Dov Yosef of the ruling Mapai party served as minister of justice from October 1951 until June 1952, followed for a brief while by Attorney General Cohn. Yosef would be the justice minister again in 1961–1966.

21. The Israeli Judiciary has always been divided into several districts, all under the rule of a single supreme court. There were three District Courts in Israel in 1950, each headed by a president; there were several Magistrate Courts in each district, collectively headed by chief judges.

22. President Azulai’s memo in the Attorney General’s letter to the Chief Justice (December 24, 1950), and President Azulai’s notes from his meeting with the Minister of Justice (February 23, 1951) in his letter to the Chief Justice (February 28, 1951), ISA ISA-Courts-SupremeCourtPres-000b2dv.

23. Attorney General Cohn’s letter to the presidents of courts (March 3, 1952), ISA, ISA-Courts-SupremeCourtPres-000b2dv.

24. Letter of the President of the District Court of Tel Aviv Bar-Zachai to the Attorney General (March 13, 1952), ISA ISA-Courts-SupremeCourtPres-000b2dv.

25. The Minister of Justice to the Chief Justice, side letter to the terms of appointment of the Director of Courts (July 28, 1952), ISA ISA-Courts-SupremeCourtPres-000b2jy; Minister of Justice to Judge Yehoshua Eisenberg, Terms of Appointment as Director of Courts (July 28, 1952), ISA ISA-Courts-SupremeCourtPres-000b2jy.

26. On the numbers of workers, see: List of employees of the Ministry of Justice (undated), ISA ISA-justice-justice-000rfzn; The Budget Law of the Year 1953/54; Budget Law of the Year 1963/4; Budget Law of the Year 1973. For Olshan’s report, see: Report of Justice Olshan. On placing the Administration in the same building as the Supreme Court, see a letter of the Director of Courts to the Assistant Registrar of the Supreme Court (September 17, 1952), ISA ISA-justice-justice-000rg00.

27. See: Report of Justice Yitzhak Olshan (undated), ISA ISA-Courts-SupremeCourtPres-000b2dv; Olshan, Din-u-dvarim, 225; See note 24 above.

28. See note 25 above.

29. Translation into English taken from Israel’s Courts of Law and Tribunals (Haifa: Aryeh Greenfield-A.G. Publications, 2nd ed., 2003) of the Courts Law, 1984.

30. Circular no. 1 of the Director of Courts (October 10, 1952), ISA ISA-justice-justice-000rg00.

31. Letter of the Director of Courts to Judge Bernard Botein (December 13, 1966), ISA ISA-justice-justice-000rg8j.

32. See: Circulars of the Director of Courts (December 1, 1952), ISA ISA-Courts-SupremeCourtPres-000b2jz.

33. Exceptions exist. For instance, the Minister reprimanded Director Eisenberg a few months after his appointment, for directly addressing the Knesset instead of going through him. Similarly, the Ministry’s general manager reproached the director in March 1954, for revealing the intent to establish another court in Tel-Aviv without prior consultation and collaboration with Ministry officials. See: Letter of the Minister of Justice to the Director of Courts (November 28, 1952), ISA ISA-justice-justice-000rg00; Letter of the General Managerof the Ministry of Justice to the Director of Courts (March 1, 1954), ISA ISA-justice-justice-000rg04.

34. For interventions from the Ministry of Finance, see below in “Enduring Tensions and Points of Contention: 1952–1995”.

35. See letter of the Director of Courts reprimanding Judge Bar-Zeev for coming late to work (October 25, 1966), ISA ISA-justice-justice-000rg8j; Letter of complaint by advocates Abd El-Rahman Zuubi, Gargura, El Hawari and others to the Minister of Justice and the director of courts with regard to the problems in the operation of the Magistrate Court of Nazareth (October 21, 1965), ISA ISA-justice-justice-000rg0h.

36. Cf.: Circular no. 1 of the Director of Courts (October 10, 1952), ISA ISA-justice-justice-000rg00; circular of the Director of Courts to the Presidents of the Courts stipulating that judges would henceforth work five days a week (August 31, 1966), ISA ISA-justice-justice-000rg8j; “Sidrey avoda hadashim le-shoftim be-matara le-hitgaber al ha-sahevet [New Regulations of Work for Judges in Order to Overcome Foot-Dragging],” Davar, May 20, 1974, 12, https://www.nli.org.il/he/newspapers/dav/1974/05/20/01/article/146; Shetreet, “Hizuk ha-reshut ha-shofetet,” 186–187.

37. For his great respect of the judges, see his letter to the chief justice (December 7, 1948), ISA ISA-Courts-SupremeCourtPres-000b2e0.

38. Divrei HaKnesset 46 (June 13, 1966), 1708.

39. Yigal Lev, “Ha-Tzaad Ha-Bba: Kviat ”Baal Bait” Le-Batey Ha-Mishpat [The Next Step: Appointing a ‘Landlord’ over the Courts].” Maariv, November 9, 1966, 12, https://www.nli.org.il/he/newspapers/mar/1966/11/09/01/article/78.

40. Private Interview with former Chief Justice Meir Shamgar (December 31, 2016), on file with the authors; Lahav, Israel be-mishpat, 243–244.

41. See: Letter of Attorney General Shamgar to various Government Ministers, the Secretary of the Government, Head of the Budget and Legal Advisors to Ministers August 10, 1971), and the accompanying Draft Bill Courts Law (amendment) 1971, ISA ISA-PMO-GovernmentSecretary-000k2bb; Letter of Attorney General Shamgar to the director of courts (November 5, 1973), and the accompanying draft bill, ISA isa-justice-courtadministration-000dp0h; Draft Bill Judges Law (Amendment) (undated, circa 1973), ISA isa-justice-courtadministration-000dp0h; Draft Bill Courts Law 1974, ISA isa-justice-courtadministration-000dp0h; Minutes of meetings at the Ministry of Justice (May 19, 1974; May 29, 1974; June 19, 1974), ISA isa-justice-courtadministration-000dp0h; Geva, Aharon. “Madua Nihul Batey Ha-Mishpat Le-Nassi Beit Ha-Mishpat Ha-Elyon [Why [transfer the authority] to Manage the Courts to the Chief Justice].” Davar, October 27, 1972: 13, https://www.nli.org.il/he/newspapers/dav/1972/10/27/01/article/124. Cf. to later drafts that did not include such provisions, e.g.: Draft Bill Basic Law: the Judiciary 1982, ISA isa-justice-courtadministration-000dp0j; Draft Bill Judges Law (Amendment of section 14) 1983, ISA isa-justice-courtadministration-000dp0j.

42. See: Section 24 of the Draft Bill Courts Law (amendment) 1971, ISA ISA-PMO-GovernmentSecretary-000k2bb; Section 18 of the Draft Bill Courts Law (Amendment) 1974, ISA isa-justice-courtadministration-000dp0h; Sections 1 and 2 of a Draft Bill Judges Law (Amendment) (undated, circa 1973), ISA isa-justice-courtadministration-000dp0h. To later drafts that did not include such provisions, see note 40 above.

43. Letter of a Ministry of Finance official to the Attorney General (September 22, 1971), ISA ISA-PMO-GovernmentSecretary-000k2bb; Private Interview with Chief Justice Shamgar; Private Telephone Interview with former Deputy Attorney General Judith Karp (January 25, 2015), on file with the Authors.

44. Shimon Shetreet, “Atzmaut ha-shoftim ve-yeilut batey ha-mishpat [Independence of the Judges and Efficiency of the Courts].” Maariv, June 5, 1974, 5, https://www.nli.org.il/he/newspapers/mar/1974/06/05/01/article/47.

45. Shetreet, “Ha-ahrayut al minhal batey ha-mishpat,” 517.

46. Ibid.

47. Rubinstein, Shoftey eretz, 114.

48. Alon ma’arekhet ha-shiput 11 (August 1987), 5 and 25–30; Private Interview with Chief Justice Shamgar.

49. Ibid; Mazza et. al., Report of the Commission for Judicial Council.

50. Kedmi et. al., Report of the Commission; Ibid.

51. See: Circular no. 1 of the Director of Courts to the District Court judges (October 10, 1952), ISA ISA-justice-justice-000rg00; Circular no. 1 of the Director of Courts to the registrars and chief secretaries of the District Courts (October 10, 1952), ISA ISA-justice-justice-000rg00; Circular no. 1 of the Director of Courts to Magistrate Courts judges (October 10, 1952), ISA ISA-justice-justice-000rg00; Circular no. 1 of the Director of Courts to the chief secretaries of the Magistrate Courts (October 12, 1952), ISA ISA-justice-justice-000rg00; Report of the Director of Courts to the State Comptroller (November 17, 1953), ISA ISA-justice-justice-000rg00; 22nd Annual Report of the Israel State Comptroller for the Year 1971 (1972), 472–476; Several letters exchanged between the Administration of Courts and the State Comptroller (December 1971-February 1972), ISA ISA-comptroller-StateInstitutions-0004w7l (from these letters it is clear that the day-to-day running of the district courts was at the hands of the court presidents).

52. President Azulai’s letters to Chief Justice Agranat (July 4, 1967), and to the Minister of Justice (July 10, 1967), ISA ISA-justice-justice-000rg8l. President Azulai’s letter to Justice Landau (January 1, 1968), ISA ISA-justice-justice-000rg8q.

53. Ibid.

54. On the resistance of a District Court President in the late 1980s to the computerization of the Judiciary, see: Ben-Dror, Haim she-kae’lea, 129.

55. See note 24 above; Report of Justice Olshan.

56. Complaint of Adv. Moshe Goldenberg to the chief justice (December 25, 1949), ISA ISA-Courts-SupremeCourtPres-000b2k5.

57. Letter of the Minister of Justice to the presidents of the District Courts of Jerusalem, Haifa, and Beer Sheva (March 25, 1968), ISA ISA-justice-justice-000rg8q; Letter of the president of the District Court of Beer Sheva to the Minister of Justice (March 31, 1968), ISA ISA-justice-justice-000rg8q.

58. Minutes of a meeting of the presidents of the district courts including the director of courts and his deputy (September 29, 1965), ISA ISA-justice-justice-000rg0h.

59. See: letter of chief justice (of a Magistrate Court) segal to the director of courts (November 24, 1964), ISA ISA-justice-justice-000rg8k; letter of the director of courts to the Minister of Justice (November 15, 1966), and the negative reply of his Chief of Staff (January 17, 1967), ISA ISA-justice-justice-000rg8k.

60. See note 25 above; Report of Justice Olshan.

61. See, e.g.: Abraham Rosentlar’s complaint to the director of courts (July 4, 1958), ISA ISA-Courts-SupremeCourtPres-000b2dv; complaint of Michael Straus to the Minister of Justice (November 3, 1967), ISA ISA-justice-justice-000rg8k; Complaint of Adv. Zvi I. Ben Shlomo against Judge Joseph Harish to the director of courts (November 1, 1966), ISA ISA-justice-justice-000rg8k; other documents submitted to the director in the matter of Judge Harish and the decision of the director sent to the Minister of Justice stating that the complaint is unfounded (January 8, 1967), ISA ISA-justice-justice-000rg8k. From the 1980s, see: Ben-Dror, Haim she-kae’lea, 129–130.

62. Letter of President Bar-Zachai to the Director of Courts complaining that new regulations on sick leave have created disgruntlement with the judges (January 2, 1953), ISA ISA-justice-justice-000rg00; letter of Deputy President Zeltner to the Director of Courts on the wishes of judges to transfer between courts (March 1, 1954), ISA ISA-Courts-SupremeCourtPres-000b2k3; letter of the State Attorney to the Director of Courts (November 27, 1952, entitled “secret”), ISA ISA-justice-justice-000rg00.

63. See, for instance: Letter of Judge Harish to Chief Justice Olshan, November 12, 1962, ISA ISA-Courts-SupremeCourtPres-000b2jy; Letter of the Minister of Justice to three Magistrate Court judges, September 23, 1962, ISA ISA-Courts-SupremeCourtPres-000b2kb; letter of the National Representation of the Magistrate Courts Judges of Israel to the Minister of Justice, November 8, 1966, ISA ISA-justice-justice-000rg8k; “Ma’amatz Limnoa Hashbatat Batei-Hamishpat [An Attempt to Prevent the Courts’ Strike].” Davar, March 2, 1978: 2, https://www.nli.org.il/he/newspapers/dav/1978/03/02/01/article/41; Tadmor, Joshua. “Itzhaak Olshan Nassi Beit Ha-Mishpat Ha-Elyon Le-Sheavar: Hashkhu Einay Khasher Shamati Al Shoftim Ha-Meaymim Lishbot [Former Chief Justice Izhaak Olshan: My Eyes Were Darkened When I heard that Judges Were Threatening to Strike].” Davar, March 3, 1978: 14, https://www.nli.org.il/he/newspapers/dav/1978/03/03/01/article/131; Ha-Shoftim Bitlu Yetziatam Le-Hufsha Be’ikvot Pgisha Im Sar Ha-Mishpatim [The Judges Cancelled their Going on Vacation Following a Meeting with the Minister of Justice].” Davar, March 6, 1978: 1, https://www.nli.org.il/he/newspapers/dav/1978/03/06/01/article/10

64. Letter of the Representation of the District Courts to the Chief Justice (December 4, 1952), ISA ISA-Courts-SupremeCourtPres-000bdg4; minutes of a meeting between the Chief Justice and the director of courts (December 24, 1952), ISA ISA-Courts-SupremeCourtPres-000b2k2.

65. Letter of Judge Eisenberg to the Chief Justice (September 24, 1962), ISA ISA-Courts-SupremeCourtPres-000b2jy; letter of the Chief Justice to the Judge Eisenberg (September 26, 1962), ISA ISA-Courts-SupremeCourtPres-000b2jy; letter of Judge Eisenberg to the Chief Justice (September 26, 1962), ISA ISA-Courts-SupremeCourtPres-000b2jy; letter of Judge Eisenberg to the Chief Justice (October 2, 1962), ISA ISA-Courts-SupremeCourtPres-000b2jy; letter of Judge Eisenberg to the Chief Justice (October 3, 1962), ISA ISA-Courts-SupremeCourtPres-000b2jy.

66. See note 31 above.

67. Letter of Chief Justice Agranat to the Minister of Justice (June 10, 1968), ISA ISA-justice-justice-000rg8r; Lahav, Israel be-mishpat, 244.

68. Private Interview with former Chief Justice Shamgar; Shamgar, Tam ve-lo nishlam, 148–149; Bulletin of the Judiciary, 6.

69. Mazza et. al., Report of the Commission for Judicial Council.

70. Report of Justice Olshan; President Azulai’s memo; See note 24 above.

71. See note 56 above; letter of the general manager of the Ministry of Justice to the President of the District Court of Tel Aviv on amending the Courts Ordinance (September 8, 1949), ISA ISA-Courts-SupremeCourtPres-000b2k5; minutes of the Sub-Committee on the Budget of the Ministry of Justice of the Knesset’s Constitution Committee (January 31, 1950)היכן הטקסט הזה?; ibid., March 21, 1950; ibid., March 28, 1950; ibid., April 10, 1950; ibid., April 17, 1950; ibid., April 26, 1950), ISA ISA-knesset-knesset-0002j3z. See also note 25 above; “Shinuim yesodi’m ba-nohal ha-mishpati le-hahashat ha-shiput ve-leye’ilut administrativit [Fundamental Reforms in Judicial Procedure to Hasten Adjudication and Administrative Efficiency].” Ha-Tzofe, July 15, 1952: 1; See note 51 above.

72. See: Letter of the State Attorney to the director of courts (September 2, 1952), ISA ISA-justice-justice-000rg00; See note 26 above; Letter of the Director of Courts to the Acting Chief Justice (October 10, 1952), ISA ISA-justice-justice-000rg00. See also the aforementioned two letters of the State Attorney to the director of courts (both dated November 27, 1952, one entitled “secret”), ISA ISA-justice-justice-000rg00.

73. See note 61 above, See also: inner correspondence on the aforementioned complaint of various lawyers on the problems in the operation of the Magistrate Court of Nazareth (October 21, 1965), such as Letter of the Deputy Director of Courts to the director of courts (October 17, 1965), ISA ISA-justice-justice-000rg0h. See also: other complaints mentioned in note 61 above.

74. See note 51 above.

75. The 19th Annual Report of the Israel State Comptroller of the Year 1969 (1970), 358–366); The 22nd Annual Report of the Israel State Comptroller for the Year 1971 (1972), 472–476; The 24th Annual Report of the Israel State Comptroller of the Year 1973 (1974), 490–491.

76. Letter from the general manager (probably) of the Ministry of Justice to the Director of Budget at the Ministry of Finance with regard to the Court of Beer Sheva (February 3, 1953), ISA ISA-justice-justice-000rg00. With regard to purchasing a building for the courts of Tel Aviv, see: Letter of the director of courts to the Minister of Finance (June 21, 1953), ISA ISA-justice-justice-000rg00; Letter of the director of courts to the Minister of Finance (July 14, 1955), ISA ISA-justice-justice-000rg04. For the regular correspondence between the Ministry of Finance and the Administration of Courts in the 1960s, see the hundreds of letters in ISA ISA-mof-Budget-000l519, ISA-mof-Budget-000l51a, ISA-mof-Budget-000l51b, ISA-mof-Budget-000l51c, ISA-mof-Budget-000l51d.

77. Letter of the deputy director of courts Eliezer Ha-Levy to the Director of Organization and Methods at the Public Service Commission (October 29, 1958), ISA ISA-Courts-SupremeCourtPres-000b2jy.

78. Letter of the director of courts to the Minister of Justice (July 20, 1956), ISA-Courts-SupremeCourtPres-000b2jy.

79. Ibid; Letter of the director of courts to the Minister of Justice (February 7, 1954), ISA ISA-justice-justice-000rg04; Memo of the Administration of Courts to the Director of Budget at the Ministry of Finance (September 16, 1955), ISA ISA-justice-justice-000rg04; Ben-Dror, Haim she-kaelea, 127–128.

80. Letter of the director of courts to the Minister of Justice (August 30, 1966), ISA ISA-justice-justice-000rg8j.

81. Letter of the Deputy director of courts to all the Chief Secretaries of the District Courts, the Magistrate Courts and the Supreme Court, Magistrate Courts (March 7, 1966), ISA ISA-justice-justice-000rg0h. Moreover, in 1966 the director instituted new statistical forms in the Judiciary through cooperation with the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics. Circular of the director of courts to the Magistrate Courts (December 31, 1965), ISA ISA-justice-justice-000rg0h.

82. “Din Ve-heshbon ha-tzevet le-bdikat tzarhei koah ha-adam le-tiful batei ha-mishpat [Report of the Commission Charged with Examining the Human Resource Needs of the Courts],” March 2, 1969, ISA ISA-justice-justice-000rg8s.

83. Letter of the Deputy director of courts Judge Hagger to the Deputy Attorney General Sher (March 2, 1969), ISA ISA-justice-justice-000rg8s.

84. See: Letter of the Director of Courts to the Minister of Justice (February 23, 1966), ISA ISA-justice-justice-000rg0h; Letter of the Deputy CEO of the Ministry of Finance Salman to the Director of Courts (March 6, 1966), ISA ISA-justice-justice-000rg0h; Letter of the Director of Courts to Deputy CEO of the Ministry of Finance Salman (March 10, 1966), ISA ISA-justice-justice-000rg0h.

85. Letter of the director of courts to the Minister of Justice (June 13, 1968), ISA ISA-justice-justice-000rg8r; Letter of the head of the division for Organization and Methods at the Administration of Courts to the Chief of Staff of the Minister of Justice (October 16, 1968), ISA ISA-justice-justice-000rg8r; Letter of the Chief of Staff of the Minister of Justice to the head of the division for Organization and Methods at the Administration of Courts (October 22, 1968), ISA ISA-justice-justice-000rg8r.

86. Judiciary of Israel Website.

87. Courts Law (Amendment no. 15) 1992.

88. Private Interview with former Chief Justice Shamgar; Shamgar, Tam ve-lo nishlam 148–149; Bulletin of the Judiciary, 6.

89. Lurie, Reichman, and Sagy, “Agencification and the administration,” 718–740.

90. Ibid, 734.