Lawyers elect leader with clout in Israel’s judicial crisis

Israeli lawyers held a leadership election on Tuesday with an eye on candidates’ potential influence over the make-up of a panel for selecting judges, which is at the core of a contested bid by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to overhaul the courts.
The Israel Bar Association provides two of the Judicial Appointments Committee’s nine members. The others are a mix of Supreme Court justices, cabinet ministers and parliamentarians meant to encourage give-and-take in bench picks.
Netanyahu’s religious-nationalist coalition wants to expand the panel to give the government more clout – among reform proposals that have sparked unprecedented nationwide protests and brought unusually intense public scrutiny of the Bar’s role.